It does make sense that it would discourage fat reserves.
If calories in > calories out, you will gain fat reserves, regardless of how frequently you eat.
There is some evidence that eating widely spaced meals helps to lose fat, but it all comes down to the amount of energy you are burning vs the amount you are consuming.
Losing weight involves counting the calories input vs. the output.
For most people, in practice, it’s easier to keep an accurate count of the calories you consume at a few big meals than when you are ‘snacking’ all day long.
If humans were furnaces it would be that simple. While nothing **beowulff **said is flat-out wrong, it’s very far from the complete picture.
Eating at regular intervals is useful for appetite control. People who skip meals tend to overeat when they finally get a chance. And they overeat by more than the value of the meal * time skipped. So net, net, they’re taking in more calories by skipping than they would be eating more regularly.
Further, fasting can mess with metabolism. If as a result of skipped meals you sit there in a torpor in front of the TV instead of out being active, well that’ll burn less fuel per hour too.
My personal experience in losing weight (anecdotal evidence alert) was that eating at set times during the day was very beneficial. It is my belief that this was effective only because it helped me control my desire for food, not because it changed how my metabolism dealt with the food I gave it. Essentially I ate less and did more.
For every person who eats well multiple times per day, there are two people who are eating too many calories by snacking on unhealthy foods.
OTOH, I give you this.
It can, yes. But regularly timed meals, in and of themselves, do not. If your regularly scheduled meals amount to an overall reduction in calories, then timed meals can make it much easier to stick to. You prevent binge eating, because you’re eating every few hours and you keep stable levels of insulin and blood sugar. So it’s a qualified “yes”.
People are too different for there to be a hard and fast rule.
Someone with poor portion control might be served by fasting. I can’t eat more than about 2000 kcal in a sitting, no matter how dense the food, since my stomach is only so big and eventually my brain tells me that I should stop eating. If I only ate once a day, I’d definitely lose weight. I could eat substantially more calories if I had 3+ meals a day, even if each meal was smaller.
But what’s true of me isn’t true of everyone and some people simply can’t go that long between meals. For them, 6 400-kcal meals might be easier to sustain than 3 800-kcal meals or 2 1200-kcal meals.