The surprising benefits of frequent snacking and emotional eating

Hourly fluctuations in how much energy your body uses dictate how much food—or fuel—you need. Here's a snapshot of how your body uses energy during the day: You burn around one calorie per minute at rest. If you start to walk, that might increase to four or five calories per minute. Vigorous exercise might bounce that up to 10 or 12 calories per minute. (Keep in mind that calorie-burn figures are always estimates and vary between individuals according to body weight and other factors.)
The typical approach to balancing the energy you burn with the energy you eat is to look at your total daily energy expenditure and eat within that range. So if you burn around 2,000 calories per day and eat about that number, you will provide your body with the energy it needs (no more, no less) and your weight will remain stable.
How you eat those 2,000 calories can vary. Some people skip breakfast and may eat very little until later in the afternoon, when they eat high-calorie snacks and/or big meals. Some people, like you, nibble frequently throughout the day. Some people eat during the day and avoid eating past a certain time at night.
The body-fat factor
Theoretically, as long as the total calorie intake and expenditure are in balance, weight stays the same. However, since food doesn't just affect your body weight but also other aspects of how your body functions, it's possible that varying eating patterns may make a difference when it comes to other physiological factors such as body fat (as opposed to body weight)—and even physical performance and mental concentration.Researchers at Georgia State University compared the eating patterns of different athletes. One study, conducted by Dan Bernadot, Ph.D., found that female runners and gymnasts who went for long periods without eating—specifically, they didn't eat or snack for three hours or more—had the highest percentage of body fat. These athletes weren't overweight; they were in energy balance. But they had more body fat than those who ate at more regular intervals. And the longer they went without eating, the higher their body-fat percentage tended to be, especially if they exercised during these periods of calorie deprivation.
It's speculated that the scenario this creates—energy demands that are unmet—puts the body into a starvation or emergency state. So the body copes by drawing on even more stored energy and conserving what (if anything) comes in. Since normally available glucose is low, in addition to burning more body fat, the body converts normally unused proteins, like the amino acid alanine that's found in muscle, into glucose for energy.
So when food is in short supply and energy requirements are high, not only is muscle tissue compromised, but there is a larger insulin response when a fuel-deprived person finally does eat. This causes more calories to be stored as fat to prepare for future "famine." In addition, Bernadot's research also found that athletes with more erratic eating patterns experienced poorer performance and worse concentration than athletes who ate at more regular intervals.
How to plan how much and when you'll eat
Providing your body with a constant fuel supply by eating throughout the day helps regulate appetite. People who eat more often binge less and tend to eat smaller meals because they aren't as hungry when mealtime comes around.
Bernadot's research suggests that the best approach is to eat at regular intervals, specifically every three or four hours, and roughly matching how much you eat to how much energy you are expending during specific periods of the day.
One problem with applying this information on a practical level is that it's not easy to know how many calories you expend, nor is it always easy to know how many you eat. Generally, these researchers recommend that you avoid dropping into a caloric deficit that's greater than 300 calories, and also avoid binging or building up a surplus of more than around 300 calories.
It's not easy to calculate these guidelines to exact numbers, but here's a rough example: If you wake up at 8 a.m. and have not eaten anything since 8 p.m. the night before, you've burned about 60 calories an hour for eight hours. Therefore, you may be in a deficit of about 480 calories. (The size and time of your dinner the night before will also impact how great the caloric deficit will be when you wake up, so these are not exact figures.) Then, if you take an intense hour-long run and burn another 600 calories, you might find yourself in a deficit of more than 1,000 calories—and this may trigger the protective starvation response. But if you eat breakfast, you can avoid dipping too low.
Short of living in a lab, there's no surefire way to calculate your exact energy-balance status every hour of the day. But you can avoid creating large energy deficits or surpluses by eating small- to medium-sized snacks or meals every three or four hours during the day. And if you are going to do intense or long exercise sessions, eat more before and during to compensate. A useful book with more information is Nutrient Timing: The Future of Sports Nutrition by John Ivy, Ph.D., and Robert Portman, Ph.D.