According to a recent study, overweight adults eat less often than people with normal body weight but take in more calories. They are also less active over the course of the day. Findings published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association support this saying that normal weight adults, including those who had lost a lot of weight and kept it off, ate more often. Assistant professor and lead researcher Jessica Bachman in the department Nutrition and Dietetics at Marywood University in Pennsylvania, says that more than 60 percent of U.S. residents are obese or overweight. The relationship between the number of meals people eat each day and the ability to maintain weight loss, however, has remained unclear.

Bachman’s team followed about 250 people for a year, analyzing data collected in two large studies. On average, the normal weight subjects ate three meals and a little over two snacks each day, whereas the overweight group averaged three meals and just over one snack a day. People who maintained their weight after weight loss, consumed an average of 1,800 calories a day while normal and overweight subjects took in 1,900 and more than 2,000 calories a day respectively.

What you can learn? Don’t wait more than 10 hours to eat a meal. Snacking at least twice a day. It may help to prevent weight gain by staving off intense hunger.