Do you need all those meals to keep metabolism up?

When you consume food, your body expends energy to digest and process the nutrients in your diet. This is known as the “thermic effect of food” (TEF) [1, 2]. A common misconception is that you need to consume several smaller meals per day to maximize TEF for a “faster metabolism”.
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An extensive research review shows that TEF is not influenced by meal frequency when total caloric and macronutrient intake is matched [3]. This helps explain why several review papers show that a low meal frequency doesn’t slow down your metabolism or decrease fat loss if calories are controlled [3-5].
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More recent research on intermittent fasting supports this. Those that reach their nutritional needs in a small eating window are able to lose fat just as effectively as those that eat continuously throughout the day if calories are matched [6].
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All in all, maintain a meal frequency that works for you. For some people, having small meals throughout the day helps with hunger control. Others prefer not to think about food during the day and reach their nutritional needs in a smaller window. Both approaches work.
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References:
1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7733021
2. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15507147
3. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9155494
4. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4033492/
5. https://jissn.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12970-017-0174-y
6. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26384657