It's amazing how so many different "experts" will tell you different stuff. the reality is that they make up stuff to try to sound like an expert. My thought is eat whatever and whenever it makes sense to you. That doesn't mean eat 5000 calories of junk food a day though, unless ones goal is to be fat and unhealthy.
I wouldn't know about what "experts" say or don't. I just follow my trainer's directions. And you know what? It's been working for just under 30 years. The worst my body ever looks -- that is, the least defined I have been in the past 30 years -- is like this:
That's roughly my fitness/shape when I go to the Caribbean in the winter -- that guy is a touch more "mezo" than I am -- which is fine with me because nobody expects one to be in optimum shape right after the holidays. Even so, I'm comfortable with that level of fitness being a non-athlete, especially of my age. Come summertime, the extra weight on my middle is gone so my abs look more "washboardy." Right now, I've gotten rid of the winter fat and cut the creases back into my gut.
The ab definition that guy has is about as fit as I can get these days, and while I looked better when I was younger, more angular, I was supposed to look better when I was younger.
As I say all the time, it's really about the results -- looking good naked or nearly naked. That's what makes me feel good and it's what makes my lady happy....more because when we're walking on the beach or going around town at the shore or something -- settings where it's not weird to wear clothes that don't hide that one is fit -- she likes being on my arm and seeing what she describes as the covetous looks she notices other women sending our way.
She says sees them all the time, but do you think she tells me about them in a timely fashion? Not at all! She's says stuff like, "Did you notice such and such woman? She was eying you and throwing daggers at me." Apparently women have ways of communicating "yes, this is mine; yes, it's hot; and no, you can't have it," and my lady loves playing it. Whatever....I still wish she'd be more timely in letting me know; it'd be nice to see just who are these women with whom my lady is having her "competitive" moments. (It's not that I don't see that there's a woman "there." I most certainly do. It's more that once I determine they aren't gym-fit, I don't pay them any more mind than I would a dude, so by the time she brings it up, I don't remember who she's talking about.)
At any rate, just following my trainer's instructions has kept me fit enough to keep my lady content and attract the attentions of other women. That's good enough for me, however right, wrong, expert or not he is. The results are acceptable either way. After all, he works for me, I workout for me, and if the results weren't suitable, I'd have long since found a different trainer.