Counting Calories, Not Frequent Meals, Helps Dieters – AARP

Counting Calories, Not Frequent Meals, Helps Dieters – AARP: “The size or frequency of the meal doesn’t affect the calories we burn in a day,” said lead study author Milan Kumar Piya, a clinical lecturer with the U.K. National Institute for Health Research. “If you eat two meals or five, as long as it’s the same number of calories, there is no difference in energy expenditures, so there is no effect on weight loss,” he told HealthDay.

There was, however, one big difference between those who ate several small meals and those who didn’t. For overweight women, eating more frequently increased the amount of inflammation in the body, something that didn’t happen in women of normal weight.