Does eating little and often make you lose weight? How many times a day do we have to eat to lose weight and in particular fat mass? Is it true that the frequency of meals is directly proportional to the thermogenesis induced by the diet or that, to put it simply, the more times you eat the more you push the body to burn calories? Is the advice given to many athletes to eat little and often, with up to six meals (with a protein content) per day correct? And on the contrary, is it true that eating fewer times a day makes you gain weight, and in particular fat?
So many questions, I know. And, I don’t know when you’ll read this, but it’s Monday for me.
The best time to take the bull by the horns once and for all is to answer all these questions accurately. With the help of Mr. Alan Aragon , one of the most trusted and reputable voices in the world of correct nutrition and fitness: Alan is not only super athletic and muscular, but has a rational and scientific mind like few others, and ideas clear. His articles on sports and nutrition appear in scientific journals, lectures around the world and is the coach of professional athletes. In short, who better than Alan Aragon.

In fact, he was among the authors of a splendid and accurate meta-analysis on the relationship between weight loss and meal frequency. A meta-analysis is the analysis and comparison of all the scientific studies collected on a given topic. In the case of the idea that eating little but often makes you lose weight, in fact, the scientific literature had published peasant studies: and so sometimes the news was given (and diets came out) that eating 5-6 times a day made you lose fat mass and increase metabolism; other times there was talk of non-exhaustive data, and nutritionists returned to recommend three substantial meals a day between breakfast, lunch and dinner (with at most two snacks of fruit or vegetables).
The meta-analysis, published in Oxford University’s Nutrition Reviews, January 2015,you can read it here in English.  
If you want to know it in a nutshell, follow me to page two instead.