Evaluating Jeremy Buendia’s Meal Frequency Recommendation

We’re placing meal frequency underneath the microscope.

Final up to date on November twentieth, 2024

Jeremy Buendia credit upping his meal frequency from 5 to 6 each day meals with elevating his physique. It’s a standard chorus to listen to from a aggressive bodybuilder, a lot much less a four-time winner of the Men’s Physique Olympia.

• Buendia’s endorsement of upper meal frequencies reads just like the type of recommendation you’d see in a muscle-building journal within the 2000s. After nearly twenty years of on-line proliferation, bodybuilding recommendation about meal frequency has largely gone the way in which of the dodo fowl. 

So what provides; is Buendia mendacity? In all probability not. Whereas meal frequency will not be as essential as he makes it sound, it’s nonetheless a knob it is best to flip occasionally. 

Jeremy Buendia on Meal Frequency

“Beginning to really feel my physique change once more. I went from 5 meals per day to 6 meals per day this week & it’s made an enormous distinction! Feeling quite a bit fuller, tighter & stronger!” Buendia mentioned on social media on Nov. 14, 2024, throughout a shoulder workout. 

Buendia backed his declare by performing a set of dumbbell shoulder presses with the 100s — one heck of a real-world endorsement on meal frequency. He added, “It at all times blows my thoughts how a lot our weight loss program influences our look and efficiency!” 

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Buendia is 100% right about that. 

The need of consuming six meals a day was as soon as meat-and-potatoes bodybuilding recommendation. The thought sounds believable at first. Your physique makes use of power to digest meals, and consuming meals spikes your metabolism. The extra incessantly you eat, the extra you stoke your metabolic furnace.

This concept hasn’t held as much as trendy scientific scrutiny, regardless of being among the many most typical items of old-school bodybuilding recommendation. 

• A 1993 research noticed no adjustments in fats loss between overweight ladies who consumed their each day calories in two meals or as many as 5. (1)
• A 2023 meta-analysis made a stronger declare, saying, “There isn’t any discernible benefit to consuming in a excessive or low-frequency dietary sample.” (2)
• On protein consumption, which allows muscle progress, findings from a 2013 meta-analysis by industry-leading researcher Dr. Brad Schoenfeld “refute the generally held perception that the timing of protein consumption in and round a coaching session is essential to muscular diversifications.” (3)

However wait: These findings don’t immediately contradict or disprove what Buendia mentioned about meal frequency. In reality, lots of the research on meal frequency make notice of the sensible worth of including or eliminating meals. (4)

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Why Meal Frequency Issues for Bodybuilders

Consuming extra meals isn’t a organic hack. Most current literature tells us that your complete each day dietary consumption — energy, protein, carbohydrates, fats, in addition to micronutrients and water — matter way more than the alternatives you make at every particular person meal. 

For Buendia, a sixth meal may be synonymous with upping his caloric consumption if he’s not in contest prep. Extra energy, carbs, protein, and water are dependable methods to spice up efficiency within the health club. 

Whereas meal frequency and timing don’t appear to be a giant deal for general body composition, once you eat can influence how you are feeling within the health club, which not directly impacts how a lot muscle you construct or power you achieve. 

• A place stand revealed by the Worldwide Society of Sports activities Vitamin endorsed larger meal frequency for its impact on cardiometabolic well being, irritation, and urge for food management, amongst different components. (5)

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Consuming six meals as an alternative of 5 isn’t the kind of factor that may make a giant distinction for the typical gymgoer, based on most out there scientific analysis. Buendia is not any common gymgoer; peripheral adjustments usually transfer the needle for the world’s greatest bodybuilders. 

For the remainder of us, Buendia’s recommendation is value taking with a grain of salt. In the case of meal frequency, your greatest guess is to eat as usually as means that you can keep on monitor together with your calorie and macronutrient targets — whether or not that’s throughout two meals or twelve.

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References

1. Verboeket-van de Venne WP, Westerterp KR. Frequency of feeding, weight discount and power metabolism. Int J Obes Relat Metab Disord. 1993 Jan;17(1):31-6. PMID: 8383639.
2. Blazey P, Habibi A, Hassen N, Friedman D, Khan KM, Ardern CL. The results of consuming frequency on adjustments in physique composition and cardiometabolic well being in adults: a scientific evaluation with meta-analysis of randomized trials. Int J Behav Nutr Phys Act. 2023 Nov 14;20(1):133. doi: 10.1186/s12966-023-01532-z. PMID: 37964316; PMCID: PMC10647044.
3. Schoenfeld, B.J., Aragon, A.A. & Krieger, J.W. The impact of protein timing on muscle power and hypertrophy: a meta-analysis. J Int Soc Sports activities Nutr 10, 53 (2013). 
4. Kahleova H, Lloren JI, Mashchak A, Hill M, Fraser GE. Meal Frequency and Timing Are Related to Modifications in Physique Mass Index in Adventist Well being Examine 2. J Nutr. 2017 Sep;147(9):1722-1728. doi: 10.3945/jn.116.244749. Epub 2017 Jul 12. PMID: 28701389; PMCID: PMC5572489.
5. La Bounty PM, Campbell BI, Wilson J, Galvan E, Berardi J, Kleiner SM, Kreider RB, Stout JR, Ziegenfuss T, Spano M, Smith A, Antonio J. Worldwide Society of Sports activities Vitamin place stand: meal frequency. J Int Soc Sports activities Nutr. 2011 Mar 16;8:4. doi: 10.1186/1550-2783-8-4. PMID: 21410984; PMCID: PMC3070624.

Featured Picture: @jeremy_buendia / Instagram