From my observations, people are having smaller meals and nibbling on snacks all day long. Our old friends breakfast, lunch, and dinner seem to have been, at least partially, replaced by granola bars and carrot sticks and pretzels. I came across this study by Kerver et al. (2006) that investigated meal and snack patterns and their influence on dietary intake. The results suggest that it is better to eat 3 meals a day with no snacks if you want to prevent weight gain.
The researchers separated 15,000 respondents into eating frequency categories based on the number of times they reported eating or drinking anything other than plain water within a day. On average, the participants reported about five eating occasions per day. This represents the most common eating frequency pattern the researchers found—breakfast, lunch, and dinner, plus two or more snacks. It turns out that people who practice this “normal” pattern of eating eat 450 more calories per day on average than people who eat only breakfast, lunch, and dinner with no snacks (Kerver et al. 2006).
Why Calories (Alone) Don’t Count
It’s not exactly the number of calories that matters. What really matters is the type of calories we consume when we eat snacks versus when we eat regular meals. As Dr. Yeo puts it in the introduction to his book How We Got The Science of Weight Loss Wrong: Why Calories Don’t Count, not all calories are created equally. Trends in snacking show that when we eat snacks, we are mostly reaching for things like cookies, sugar-sweetened beverages, and potato chips1. These foods have a high glycemic index—they raise blood sugar quickly causing our bodies to respond by rapidly releasing the hormone insulin. This hormone, among other things, tells our fat cells to store fat. An occasional high-glycemic or refined carbohydrate treat is fine, but, if you make it a habit of snacking on these things twice a day, you will very likely gain weight. Think about it—when snacking, you’re probably telling your fat cells to store fat five times a day, rather than just three times a day.
If you are going to snack, avoid carbohydrates with a high-glycemic index, especially the refined kinds. Pork rinds and most nuts are good to have on-hand to tide you over until dinner.
A note on Breakfast
With intermittent fasting gaining popularity over recent years, you might wonder whether the group of people who skip a meal—eating two meals a day, rather than three—eat fewer calories than the three-meal-a-day category of eaters. It turns out, in this study, the respondents who reported skipping breakfast did not do much better than the “normal” pattern of eating group. Breakfast-skippers were not necessarily having only two eating occasions daily. Most of them still had lunch and dinner, and two or more snacks each day. These folks clocked in about 250 more calories (likely of high-glycemic index foods) than people who just stuck with the three main meals alone.
If you’re going to skip breakfast, you better be sure you’re not replacing those calories with fat-storing snacks at later hours of the day when your willpower to resist overeating might be weaker. This is especially important because other research reveals that eating later in the day is associated with more weight gain than eating earlier in the day2.
Don’t Drink Yourself Fat
One caveat to the Kerver et al. (2006) study is that the researchers define an “eating occasion” as a time when anything other than plain water is consumed. As a person who sips on black, unsweetened coffee and tea throughout the day, I think it’s important to recognize that these should not count as an “eating occasion”. Multiple studies investigating the influence of fasting on health do not consider water, unsweetened tea and unsweetened black coffee to break a fast. Kerver et al. (2006) likely just assumed that people who drank coffee or tea were adding milk, cream or sugar. (This is understandable, as most people look at me like I have two heads when I order my favorite hot Americano with nothing added). Anyways, increasing unsweetened coffee intake has been found to lower one’s risk of weight gain (Henn et al. 2023).
It is okay, good even, to only eat 3 meals a day and no snacks
There you have it. The research suggests that sticking to just breakfast, lunch and dinner with no snacks (with the exception of water, unsweetened tea and unsweetened black coffee) is the way to go to prevent weight gain. This is particularly true if you don’t think you can manage just two meals a day and no snacks, as I’m sure many of us feel. Take the time to enjoy a real “meat and vegetable” meal. By eating real, whole food meals, you’ll be so satiated that you’ll no longer even crave the snacks. Try it, and you’ll quickly learn why it is better to eat 3 meals a day with no snacks.