If you're prone to overeating whenever you sit down to eat, eating more times a day can simply provide more opportunities to overeat. Likewise, if you're not a planner, then eating whatever is available every few hours can rack up the calories very quickly. The solution is to find the eating pattern that works best for you based on both your lifestyle and hunger patterns, then stick with it. The French are notorious for eating three square meals a day, and many of them believe that our heavy snacking lifestyle is a big contributor to the massive American weight gain. Any amount of activity is better than none at all.
Exercise does burn calories and is really helpful for both losing and maintaining weight.
But while exercising a moderate amount conveys health benefits, the effect on weight loss is modest. Each mile walked burns about 100 calories. So for the week, you would have used an additional 600 calories. That 600 calories translates to less than a quarter of a pound of weight-loss on the scale, provided you've kept your food intake steady. If you want to use exercise as a primary strategy for weight loss, you need to do more than this amount.