T Nation

More Meals = Faster Metabolism?

Supplements and Nutrition
#1

Trying to help my girlfriend with PCOS loose weight. We’ve made the best of rona and she’s gained a good bit of weight and is ready to make it go away. She has PCOS and it’s pretty hard for her to lashes weight. She’s also not active, which I know doesn’t help. But she’s about to start using my spin bike and rowing machine.

She can maintain weight on a stupidly low amount of calories. She normally fasts till lunch and I’m wondering if moving the opposite direction would benefit her.

So for me, when I eat more often my metabolism increases. Is this normal? Would having her eat multiple small ~250 calorie “meals” a day spread her metabolism up?

I know what works for me, but I have no idea what’s right and works for other people.

#2

@Voxel I need your brain

#3

I don’t know what impact if any PCOS has on metabolism. Can you enlighten me?

Whether or not more meals equate to a faster metabolism I think is going to be negligible, perhaps enough to be offset by genetic variability across a population. The thermic cost of digestion would be the same, presumably.

I’m of the opinion that food is fuel and nutrition, and having read this year some about how our bodies adapt to sustained low calorie environments I’d argue that eating more will be beneficial. Weight might, and most likely will increase as a consequence of several factors but in the end will serve to support more activity and a higher metabolism.

A somewhat faulty analogy, but still a useful analogy, is what you put into your body is the 100% of the budget it has to do things with. There’s a whole slew of things that it has to do, but it doesn’t always decide that it has to do something very well.

As an example, consider someone in a caloric surplus. That body can afford to run its organs on full speed, costing a certain amount of calories. A body in starvation might decide it’s okay for the kidneys to do a shitty job.

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#4

Yea idk much about PCOS, I’ve read into it a little. Seems it can be made better with time diet and exercise. Apparently it makes losing weight a lot harder as well.

#5

Is she unhappy or unhealthy with her current weight? It is possible to have a better body at one’s current bodyweight. If that’s a weight that’s not unhealthy and she’s stable there (it’s not consciously suppressed or elevated) it’s a lot easier to remain in homeostasis with regards to weight and just work on getting a better body there. It takes longer, but isn’t as much of a potential mindfuck as weight manipulation.

#6

Given this forum’s audience, I don’t think you’ll find many people who know anything about this condition. Is your girlfriend working with a doctor known to help treat PCOS?

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#7

Haha, true. I should probably bow out.

#8

@Bagsy her gyno told her she has it and there’s nothing she can do. Said he gave the birth control that he gives other women with PCOS and said kthanksbye.

I’ve reached out to my TRT doctor for a recommendation on a women’s specialist but haven’t heard back.

@Voxel she not huge or anything but is over weight. She was extremely happy when we met, she’s currently 40lbs heavier than her happy/goal weight. Only reason I’m posting asking for help is she just had a complete melt down over it and has pretty much hit rock bottom and wants to do something about it. I’m definitely walking a fine line with this and already told her as her boyfriend, me trying to be anything other than supportive is a slippery slope :joy:

#9

I’d liken this to going to a forum dominated by women who love knitting and asking them how to address male gyno.

Lara Briden is an excellent source on women’s health topics, including PCOS, if she cannot find a specialist.

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#10

You’re 100% right. It was here or the TRT Facebook page, I chose here :joy:. I’ll check out your recommendation! Thank you :slight_smile:

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#11

If someone is not active, they need to eat less than they’re comfortable with/used to doing, getting full on things like salad more often helps. Another consideration would be keto/atkins. It sucks not eating carbs, but damn if the diet doesn’t work. My friend has been on it a year and he went from over 200 lbs to like 165 he’s very thin now. I tried it for a month but didn’t stick with it because I decided to get into weight lifting and wanting to gain muscle. I lost 7-8 pounds in that month. The advantage for keto over regular dieting is you can eat a lot or what feels like a lot and still lose weight.

I don’t have much opinion on eating more often. It might help a little bit but if you’re eating the same amount in the day it won’t help much.

#12

Not gonna talk out of my ass about issues I don’t know about but:

Many studies confirm that having a more “traditional” 3 days a meal plan was more effective for weight loss than skipping breakfast.

First step for would be to make her more active like you said. If anything, it’ll make her healthier and certainly in a better state of mind, not even considering the fat loss.

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#13

Yea the active thing for sure! Been trying but she hates all things that I like, including activities that require being active. Her friend has lost a lot of weight using her spin bike, so I’m getting mine and my rower back from a buddy I lent it to. Hoping she’ll do that, but we will see.

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#14

This statement is patently false. Most likely, her gyno lazily assumed that she wouldn’t be willing to make lifestyle changes. Hence my 2- step solution:

Step 1: Get a new gyno
Step 2: follow doctor’s recommendations

#15

I can’t speak for her, but I find that I’m less hungry throughout the day if I have a bigger breakfast

#16

I also don’t know much about it, but from what I’ve read, PCOS appears to be a cause of metabolic syndrome, which is the precursor to type 2 diabetes. Given this, it seems likely that it can be treated in the same manner as insulin resistance.

A quote from an article from the journal Clinical Diabetes (found here: https://clinical.diabetesjournals.org/content/21/4/154)

“Reducing hyperinsulinemia and insulin resistance has been shown to improve the defining features of PCOS”

Eliminate sugar and crap food, replace with veggies and the best quality meat that you can afford. Also increase activity levels.

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#17

It may increase her metabolism but in the same way that coffee does, by an amount that would be wiped out by a single small mistep on one day over the course of a week.

Don’t know how PCOS changes the game though.

#18

Yes. And

Yes.

Something like South Beach (lean protein and veggies, a two week no-carb induction, then add carbs back in until weight loss stalls) might work for her. No tiresome macros to track.

Also, in addition to whatever workouts she’s able to commit to, she could try adding in 2-5 minute “bursts” of cardio a couple times a day, which have been shown to do all sorts of good things physiologically, and would help presumably as a metabolism booster. Enough to get her heart rate up, but short enough that she’s not going to be covered in sweat.

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#19

If she hates all things active, not willing to do her part, what is she wanting, a magic pill?

#20

Nothing is fixed, nothing is forever. Generally the less you do, the less you want to do. But usually as people start to move a bit, there’s a momentum, and they gradually have less and less trouble moving, sometimes ending up loving it.

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