Normal weight persons eat more meals

Normal weight adults, including those who had lost a lot of weight and kept it off, ate more often than overweight people in a new study looking at factors that may help in preventing weight gain. Researchers following about 250 people for a year found that overweight individuals ate fewer snacks in addition to meals than people in the normal body weight range, but the overweight still took in more calories and they were less active over the course of the day.

"Weight loss maintainers" consumed the fewest calories, at about 1,800 a day, compared with the normal weight and overweight subjects, who took in 1,900 and more than 2,000 calories a day, respectively. Weight loss maintainers also were the most physically active of the three groups. The results, published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association, suggest that weight loss maintainers intentionally do more to keep from regaining extra pounds.

Researchers speculate that snacking might help prevent weight gain by staving off intense hunger. For example, if you wait 10 hours after you've last eaten, you end up eating a lot more food. If you sit down and you're really hungry, you also tend to eat more calories.