Things do get a little more interesting, and the science becomes a little weaker, when you start thinking about nutritional timing in the context of body composition instead of overall weight. For instance, muscle protein synthesis remains pretty constant in someone with protein at most meals. But you are able to "spike" it about once every 3 hours (the mechanism seems to have a threshold around 8g of leucine, after which it can't be spiked again for another 3 hours).
So in theory the optimal way to eat the same number of calories, all else being equal, is evenly divided into a meal every three hours you are awake.
But it's a micro-optimization and doesn't make a huge difference, and again the science isn't super well reproduced there. People certainly succeed at elite levels with many different meal timings.