How many time a day do you eat?

So much nutrition info that I've read says it is best to eat small amounts of food numerous times during the day. Helps keep your metabolism out of starvation mode. This advice makes sense to me, but I find it very difficult to follow. I tend to eat once in the morning and once in the evening. And usually nothing in between. My weight is pretty stable as long as I keep to this pattern. I am afraid to change!! I'm afraid to start eating more often, for fear that I will eat too much! Is it better/healthier for one's body to eat more often? Could I simply eat the same foods, but stretch it out at different intervals than I do now?
When I do longer bike rides, I do eat during the ride. I've rarely had problems with bonking. But on normal days, when I work, and only ride 20-40 miles (if even that) I'm pretty much on the twice a day eating pattern.

What do you ladies do? How often do you eat? And do you feel like your eating pattern is beneficial to you in terms of your desired weight?

Thanks!!

Annie

I eat 5-6 small meals a day and I like it. It keeps me from getting really hungry and I am less likely to gorge or eat bad stuff.

A typical work day:

-light-medium breakfast (yogurt with cereal and 1 piece of fruit)

-an apple mid morning

-veggies and protein at noon

-sometimes a snakc after school (fruit or cheese and crackers)

-dinner with veggies, protein and small amount of carbs

-sometimes an evening snack like above or maybe something "bad" like dessert or chocolate or popcorn

I do one huge breakfast, then 5 or 6 smaller meals.

If eating 2x a day suits your body and you are feeling good and happy, do you need to change it?

Everybody is different.

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it"

All the time.
7 am: 2 slices of bread, juice and coffee.
9 am: green tea and rye biscuits once I get to work
11 am: large salad, lots of beans, for lunch (gee, I do eat all the time don't I :eek: )
2.30: 2-3 sandwiches, tea or coffee (fuel for the ride home)
about 5: handful of nuts or something while I contemplate dinner
about 7ish: dinner (usually just one serving)
and most important - I have to remember to eat something before I go to bed at about 11 or I wake up irritated and restless in the middle of the night.

I wonder how I get time to ride my bike.

Ha. Everyone around me would wind up seriously maimed if I only ate twice a day. :eek: I'd say I typically eat five or six times a day, maybe seven if there's something really good in the cupboard I cant resist. :p

Brekky: yoghurt and muesli + coffee
Morning tea: piece of fruit or muesli bar or muffin + coffee
Lunch: sandwich and a couple of bits of fruit/veg, maybe some soup in the winter
Afternoon tea: piece of fruit or muesli bar or muffin (+ coffee sometimes)
Pre-dinner snack (only if I'm hungry): crackers and cheese or rice crackers and dip/hummus
Dinner: quite variable, but when left to my own devices it's usually something like a stir-fry or curry over rice with a little bit of meat and lots of veg.
Afters: a couple of chocky bickies or similar if there are any in the house, but there usually aren't. :o

Morning tea gets missed out on days I don't work because I get up later and I don't have time to get hungry between breakfast and lunch. :rolleyes: That extra coffee I sometimes have tends to happen on those days too, seeing as I've only had one so far on morning tea-less days. The pre-dinner snack tends to only happen on days I've gone and done things between finishing work and getting home.

That advice is usually given to people who are trying to lose weight. If what you are doing is working for you, why change it?

Yes, you eat the same amount of calories, only spread out over the day.

Karen

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Originally Posted by annie

So much nutrition info that I've read says it is best to eat small amounts of food numerous times during the day. Helps keep your metabolism out of starvation mode. This advice makes sense to me, but I find it very difficult to follow. I tend to eat once in the morning and once in the evening. And usually nothing in between. My weight is pretty stable as long as I keep to this pattern. I am afraid to change!! I'm afraid to start eating more often, for fear that I will eat too much! Is it better/healthier for one's body to eat more often? Could I simply eat the same foods, but stretch it out at different intervals than I do now?
When I do longer bike rides, I do eat during the ride. I've rarely had problems with bonking. But on normal days, when I work, and only ride 20-40 miles (if even that) I'm pretty much on the twice a day eating pattern.

What do you ladies do? How often do you eat? And do you feel like your eating pattern is beneficial to you in terms of your desired weight?

Thanks!!

Annie

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I have extremely stable weight

i never skip breakfast; it's small, toast butter & jam; about 1 ounce of fish,
and 4 oz of red fruit juice.

snack before 10am,

lunch, usually leftovers from dinner

before i ride home i have a fruit or something like that.

then dinner.

i try not to eat anything after 7pm but sometimes I have a small snack.

I eat 3 squares, with an occasional snack if I need it (like in the middle of a long bike ride!). I find that works best for me, especially to be sure I am eating for the right reasons, hunger and not emotion. Our bodies have the ability to process and store food for use later, so I would say if 2 squares are working for you, you are a healthy weight and have good energy, to not change it. I recently lost 30 lbs and find limiting my eating to real meals very helpful.

Lately, it seems that I'm eating all day.

breakfast (8am) - usually toast with peanut butter or yogurt with granola.
snack (10am) - banana or grapes
lunch (noon) - whatever looks good in the cafeteria
afternoon snack (2pm) - fig newtons or chocolate or pretzel sticks
late afternoon snack (5-6pm) - pretzels or cheese
dinner (7pm) - depends on the day...

While I'm not losing weight, I'm also not gaining any, so I guess this is working...

It sounds like you are not trying to lose weight, but not eating for many hours in the middle of the day is probably not real healthy. You risk your blood sugars plumetting and just feeling not as strong as you might at some point in the afternoon. Do you hit about 4:00 pm and feel like your day should be over?

Everyone is different, but I would be a mess in the afternoon if I ate like that!:D

I once read a book that had a different take on weight and nutrition than so many out there. For the life of me I can't remember the title, but I do remember the key concept, that of "fast burners" and "slow burners". There was a quiz to take based on your eating habits to determine which camp you fell into. Over-simplifying, "fast burners" are folks who have quick metabolisms and thus feel ravenously hungry if they don't eat something every couple of hours. "Slow burners", otoh, tend to have slow metabolisms, rarely feel hungry between meals, and so forth. There was a lot more to it that I've forgotten now. They recommended that FBs eat more fat and protein so that their food would "stick to their ribs" and last longer; where "slow burners" were supposed to eat lighter meals, more carbs, and maybe more frequently than they would normally feel the urge, to boost their metabolism. A friend and I both took the quiz and were complete opposites. I came out a fast burner, and sure enough, a low-carb, high-fat/protein diet enabled me to lose weight, feel much less hungry and thus eat less often. My friend, a slow burner, felt like crap on a low-carb diet and did much better losing weight with high healthy carbs and low fat and eating more frequently than her body naturally "wants" to. All kind of interesting.

As a fast burner, I'd never, ever be capable of lasting from breakfast to dinner without snacks, even if I were still eating low-carb. My stomach starts growling an hour or two after eating, and as a result I am a three-meal-a-day plus 2-3 snacks gal. My slow burner friend has started eating three meals (she always used to skip breakfast and never feel hungry until lunchtime) and a couple of healthy snacks daily, like fruit, and she's lost weight doing that. I'm maintaining my weight now since reaching my goal weight on a low-carb diet five years ago and try to eat a balanced diet of carbs, fat, and protein.

Sorry this is long-winded. In any event, it sounds like you're a slow burner and thus can do something I can never do - skip meals and snacks too! As long as you're at your ideal weight and feel good, I don't see any harm in it. We're all very different! :)

Emily

Reading the different eating styles that work for all of us has been a good learning experience for me. It's very easy, to read in a book or magazine, that one method of eating is superior to another for ALL people. Obviously, this is not the case. :rolleyes: Thank you all for sharing what works/does not work for each of you. I don't feel like quite such a anomoly, with my twice a day meals.

If you DO remember the name of the book you read, Emily, I'd really appreciate your posting that info. If not, c'est la vie........ I'll try and do some googling and see what I come up with.

Annie

Just really test what works for you.

I thought I just wasn't as strong a rider as the rest of my club... until the day I happened to eat a nice big lunch, with a couple of bowls of brown rice, on club ride day. All of a sudden I could hang with them and my legs weren't hurting :confused: Deliberately repeating the experiment has reproduced the results... if I have a big high-carb meal 3 hours or so before the ride, I am MUCH stronger. I would never have known if I hadn't tested it.