In my humble opinion, and from experience of 9 GROWS, That is a wives tale, and is only ocasionally successful in a SOG grow.
When you cut several branches or leaves off, well,to begin with, those BIG leaves, often called FAN leaves, are the main source of
photosynthesis ,
of taking in carbon dioxide and releasing oxyegen for the entire plant. Those big leaves are very needful to the plant's health, and processing food into energy. The wives tales explains it like pigs at a trough eating. Remove some pigs and the other pigs get more. WRONG! It is not the same situation. Beleive me, I own 14 books on GROWING POT and they all agree on this point. Wait until you see one of those bottom leaves YELLOWING naturally, then remove it with sharp scissors. It's best to tuck them to the sides or under each other.
2nd, when you remove several leaves or branches, the opposite happens that you expected, the plant goes into SHOCK and quits eating, drinking and growing.
It is like saying you will have less weight to carry if we cut your legs off. Does that make sense?
And I can also guarantee you, IF you do cut them off, within a week, AFTER it comes out of shock, the little ones will just take the place of the removed leaves, and fill in the space.