I try my best to have 5 small meals throughout the day. Dinner, for obvious reasons is the tough time. 3 meals a day that are well balanced can be the best for some folks. It is true that metabolism does go up with the smaller meals throughout the day, but they have to be structured pretty well for that to work. Snacking and having 3 meals a day isnt the best for most people and may make your loss slow. The idea behind it has to be that the snack makes you less hungry for what might have been a larger meal. So you are eating the same amount just over time.
I find that it is so hard to eyeball portion sizes, that it has been a real trick to get the smaller meal thing down, but it makes my loss much better.