If you don't eat every few hours, your body will think it's starving and start storing fat." I watched a nutritionist tell my fiancée this with complete confidence. It's one of the most widely-believed myths in nutrition—and it's completely false. Humans evolved experiencing regular periods without food. Our ancestors didn't have constant access to meals. Yet somehow we're told that going 16 hours without eating will trigger metabolic disaster. The actual research tells a very different story.