Man 2.0 Engineering the Alpha

highest in calories and great for your testosterone levels.
    Now, here’s where things got muddy for a while: it was posited that if eating requires energy, then eating more frequently would require energy more frequently—and that a net effect would be to require more energy. That’s how the multiple-meals-per-day movement started. Makes sense from a logical perspective, but it’s completely based on pseudoscience and assumptions. Shockingly, no one questioned this for decades.
    The reality is that your body doesn’t care about how many meals you eat. Read that again and write it down because it might be the biggest change that improves your new approach to food. You can choose how often you want to eat every day.
    The thermic effect of food is directly proportional to caloric intake, and if caloric intake is the same at the end of the day, there will be no metabolic difference between eating six meals or three.
    This fact is so blatantly true that Canadian researchers wrote a published study that was literally titled: “Increased Meal Frequency Does Not Promote Greater Weight Loss in Subjects Who Were Prescribed an 8-Week Equi-Energetic Energy-Restricted Diet.” (We think they were trying to make the point clear.) In fact, as long as the total calories are the same, you can eat ten meals or one meal and you’ll still get the same metabolic effect.
    The best approach to your diet is the one that is sustainable for you and fits your lifestyle. With regard to energy balance and thermic effect of food, you can really eat as many meals—or as few—as you want. Your body primarily functions based on how much you eat, the composition of what you eat, and the sources of food you select. Yes, there are strategies that you should follow—such as eating more carbs late at night. But whether you split those carbs into one big meal or three nightly snacks is your choice.
    There are reasons why eating less frequently could be a better choice for you and your body. Researchers at the University of Kansas Medical Center found that eating more frequently is less beneficial from the perspective of satiety, or feeling full. Which means that the more often you eat, the more likely you are to be hungry—leading to higher caloric intake and eventual weight gain. In other words, whether you realize it or not, when you eat more often, you’re more likely to eat more food. When you eat less frequently, you can eat larger meals and feel more satisfied, and you’re less likely to take in more calories.
    This also makes sense if you’re following an intermittent fasting routine to limit the number of hours you eat during the day. If you condense the amount of time you allow yourself to eat into a small window of four to eight hours, having more than two to three meals becomes impractical at best and impossible at worst. That’s why most of our clients prefer to have just two to three meals, and they find that this works perfectly with their schedule and lifestyle. If more meals are needed, that’s fine too—as long as it works within the intermittent fasting schedule and the eating window (eight to ten hours, on most days) that you create.
    Whatever you choose, these two fixes offer you more control than other dieting methods do, and their lack of control is one of the most common reasons why people quit eating plans.

    THE HEALTHIEST, MOST SCIENTIFICALLY SUPPORTED DIET EVER CREATED
    The most obvious reasons to follow an intermittent fasting protocol is that there really aren’t any downsides and it’s the only eating strategy to help optimize hormones, according to what we’ve found within scientific literature. For starters, there’s the improved insulin sensitivity that comes with fasting, especially when paired with the exercises in part 3. Fasting also increases the secretion of GH, offsets cortisol production, helps control leptin and ghrelin levels to keep you satisfied, and even facilitates a healthier environment for testosterone production. It’s a hormone optimization cocktail that depends on only one action—setting a window of time for when you eat. And that window can shift based on the day and your schedule.
    We’ll be the first to admit that intermittent fasting isn’t for everyone. Some people might try it and not like the approach. But for health benefits and ease of application, you won’t find many dieting strategies with fewer rules. As you’ll discover, after the initial phase, you’re able