This way I know that I'll be completely satisfied at least once per day, and of course there are limits of what I can eat in a single meal (and not much time left in the day for eating more).
I found out that this is what works best for me, my personality and my relationship with food. I can do this indefinitely, while in the past, I would eat healthily for maybe weeks or months, but then I would go back to the same old habits.
For other people it would not make sense, or be a bad fit. My point is that, in the end, nutrition is something very personal and has heavy psychological implications, and should be treated case by case, there is not a "silver bullet" working for everyone.
You stopping having hunger pangs in the mornings after some days is your body adapting to your schedule. As long as you don't go lunch with a blackhole in the stomach and are mindful about what you're eating, it's fine. Still, eating something in between is important to avoid wild sugar peaks and helps improving cognition performance if your job is intellectual.
When I eat more meals a day and then suddenly have a longer gap than I'm used to, I find it easy to do that.
When I systematically east 1-2 meals a day, I adapt to that pattern in 2-3 days, and then have no problems eating a diet where getting sufficient fat is actually hard, and where I often find I have to add some "easy" carbs to meet my calorie requirements because the sheer volume of food I am due to eat for my lunch makes it an annoying chore.
Part of the reason I don't like the "many small meals" approach is because I then quickly adapt to getting hungry many times a day, and the chance of getting hungry at a time I can't eat makes it very easy to snack on unhealthy foods.
> You stopping having hunger pangs in the mornings after some days is your body adapting to your schedule.
Exactly. With no need for many meals a day.
> Still, eating something in between is important to avoid wild sugar peaks and helps improving cognition performance if your job is intellectual.
Not my experience at all. I get the "wild sugar peaks" when I eat irregularly and/or when I consume lots of easily digested sugars. But since I don't get hungry very often while do intermittent fasting, I have no problems eating a lot of my fat and protein first, at which point I don't generally want much sugar, and my diet ends up being foods that are digested fairly slowly. I do get a bit tired shortly after lunch, but I quickly get more energy again and conversely my mornings are generally far more alert than they used to be with lots of small meals.
I am not sure if this is true. I think in people without diabetes, insulin does it's job and regulates your blood sugar pretty well during a fast and I think cognition is better when a large amount of your body's resources are not being used to digest food.
Without snacking during the day, it is far easier to quantify exactly what I am putting into my body and it is easier to make sure whatever it is, is of a higher quality and is actually what I need (or feel that my body needs). In addition to this, big meals in the late afternoon or evening are a lot more satisfying to me than multiple small meals that just leave me wanting more.
I would highly recommend this way of life to anyone struggling with what they are eating.
The "snacks" between meals is for eating something like a fruit, yogurt, nuts... not french fries. Without eating fruits throughout the day you probably don't even meet the minimum fruit intake recommendation. Depending on the country, the average intake is half than the recommended.
Is there any research that actually shows that?
My own personal experience with leangains (intermittent fasting; taking all my calories in an 8 hour window with lunch being my first and biggest meal) is that I find it far harder to overeat that way than with smaller meals. It's "easy" to fit in a snack between small meals, but after lunch I'm totally sick of food, and it's hard for me to even meet my macro nutrient goals (I lift weights; my protein intake is high). Often I have to force myself to take in a second meal to meet my calorie needs (edit: because I simply often don't want to eat again before the end of my eating window, around 8pm, after my massive lunch at noon).
On the opposite end, I see very few people around me that eat "only" two meals. My co-workers for example, might very well only sit down for a meal twice, but they snack constantly. And their "snacks" are often substantially higher calorie than their main meals. When I did try to diet with many small healthy meals, it was a nightmare - I was constantly hungry and constantly craving food.
When I do intermittent fasting, I have hunger pangs in the mornings 2-3 days, and then I stop being hungry in the mornings.