Question? How Many meals do you eat a day?
TBeverly49
Posts: 322 Member
My "healthy eating" training (which obviously has been wrong until now) is that we are to eat 3 main meals a day and at least 2 snacks. Does the low carb group do that? Some days I get the protein and fats in, but not all the meals. Is that a problem for any of you?
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I eat starting from about noon, then I eat the biggest meal of the day. And something smaller at around 7PM. That's it. Don't worry about "meals" . It does make it harder to fit in, because culturally, structure our day around "meals". Remember, if you're in ketosis, cravings go away, and fasting, ie postponing to eat, becomes way easier, so you'll find there's much more flexibility. I went out sailing one day, and postponed eating until 4PM. Not by design, but that was how it turned out. That did surprise me!0
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Thanks. I am retired and some days I get up take my dog out, read whats new on the computer and before I know it it will be in the afternoon. But I am not hungry. Then I will eat a lighter meal like you say in the evening, sometimes around 8 or 9. So that is not uncommon?0
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I normally eat only two meals a day, it feels much better not to be constantly eating. I think with the high fat it's easy to feel full and not need to eat for extended periods. Fasting till lunch time has lots of health benefits.0
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I eat three meals a day with usually one very small "snack" (if you can call it that - 1 teaspoon lemon flavored cod liver oil & 2.25 ounces of raspberry chia kombucha tea) between lunch and dinner. I like my smallest, lightest meal at breakfast and I typically like my largest, heaviest meal at dinnertime. It doesn't always work out like that but that is what I like. Every once in a while I will have two larger meals and one snack instead of the usual 3 meals a day plus snack. Just do what's right and works for you. In the end, that's all that really matters anyway.0
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I eat 3 meals. I can eat less carbs a meal & get better bg#s.
I get 1800 calories so they're nice sized meals.
I eat by the clock, I don't get hungry much.
OR 
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Usually one. If I feel like it or I have a family meal planned it's two. I don't force myself to do it, it just happens on low carb. Less cooking, less dishes, fine by me!0
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I think what you're doing now is perfectly fine. It's very typical to eat only two meals while eating low carb. That's pretty much what I do. Only occasionally do I find myself eating a breakfast and usually because it's the weekend and I'm cooking for the family and the sausage smells too good! But then I feel stuffed and lazy all day!0
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Sunny_Bunny_ wrote: »I think what you're doing now is perfectly fine. It's very typical to eat only two meals while eating low carb. That's pretty much what I do. Only occasionally do I find myself eating a breakfast and usually because it's the weekend and I'm cooking for the family and the sausage smells too good! But then I feel stuffed and lazy all day!
It's also great not to get the sugar burner snarlies when I go a few hours without eating. I'm horrible for that. Probably some kind of low blood sugar issue.0 -
The answers are going to vary widely on this one.
A lot of people find they aren't hungry enough to eat until noon or later. Some have BPC coffee (or keto coffee).
I've tried to coast by on low-calorie coffee until noon. It makes me want to kill people. I can do it if I have fatty keto coffee, but some would argue with me that the coffee is actually breakfast. However, I'm usually pretty darn cranky and also ready to kill people if I have to go past noon. But I can make it at least until then before Mrs. Hyde comes out.
Most days I eat 3 meals. Sometimes I have 1 snack. It just depends on breakfast for me. Now, if I eat a fatty-meat-only breakfast (which is super fat concentrated) I can often go until about 3 in the afternoon until I need to eat again. But I'm obsessed with OMM's (mug muffins) right now, so I've been eating those. They don't carry me as far. So I end up with more meals.
There are people who only eat one meal a day and are highly satisfied with that lifestyle. I do wish for the simplicity of that sometimes. But like I've said, if I don't eat regularly, my family is sorry.0 -
When I was just maintaining for a couple of years, I ate plain Greek yogurt every morning for probiotics and a regular meal right after work. I was never hungry and used my "lunch break" for a little exercise.0
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Two meals a day for me on most days, occasionally a 3rd that's really small compared to the other two and could just be a "snack".0
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2 meals and maybe 3 snacks. Breakfast is my main meal, but it is half the carbs of the day, so I might change it, but its hard cause I have had the same food for breakfast 5 days a week for the last 15 years.0
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One meal per day is my norm now. I have evolved from eating 3 meals, then down to 2, and now I feel best when eating 1 meal at supper. At that meal I eat until I am satisfactorily full but not stuffed.0
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I eat about 3 meals and 3 snacks. Typically 1 protein shake in the morning, lean meat or fish with 2 veggies for lunch, a protein shake for dinner. My snacks consists of broth in the am, broth late afternoon and a hundred calorie snack a couple of hours before bedtime. Sometimes I switch lunch with my dinner.
And 1 piece of fruit and one plain yogurt0 -
I eat 2-5 times per day. I count my coffee as a meal since I add cream and protein powder to it; that's often 2 meals of my day. I usually have a sit down lunch and dinner, and about half the time I have an after dinner snack.0
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You have to listen to your body. Some ppl don't eat till two pm. I tried that. But it doesn't work for me. I overeat and I eat way too late and at night I'm tired and my willpower is lower and I tend to eat worse. In fact I can say no to temptation every day till about seven pm!
So I found for me, I need to start the clock going with a breakfast every day upon waking. For me it works better if I stop eating around eight pm. I even used to set an alarm for seven pm saying "kitchen closed" before I got in the habit.
I eat three meals. Around 8, around 1 and around 6, so that spaces them at five hours apart. When I don't skip any one of them I do better. Keeping a food log really helps you know your body. Sometimes I'll do a small snack at night, especially if I'm under 1000 cals for the day.
The only meal I have to force is bfast, and I do force it, because it helps me stay on task. I'm not a morning person and I don't like eggs, but if I eat them first thing before my body knows what I'm doing it seems to help.
I don't do a big bfast. Usually fatty coffee and either an egg or some cheese or some egg with cheese. I save my creativity for when I'm awake. 0 -
2 @ day for me. One if I eat too much on the first one.
Dan the Man from Michigan
Keto / Water Fasting / E.A.S.Y. Exercise Program
113 pounds down, 22 to go. 13 months on diet0 -
Depends - weekdays - I'm currently doing two a day, no snacks, generally. Breakfast, about half my daily calories, then water fast 8-10 hours to dinner, then large dinner. My breakfast is carb heavier, usually, but that's better if I'm going to have more carbs, to do it earlier, I've been told.
Weekends, 3 meals, snacks, whatever. I find that I don't eat large enough meals usually on weekends to sustain me through snacking periods.
With my IR, I find that if I'm wanting to snack, either I didn't eat enough at my meal - or I'm wanting to snack for non-hunger reasons. I'm working really, really hard to get away with that, because with my IR, the more breaks I can give my body from insulin increases, the more efficient it gets, etc.0 -
I eat 3 "meals" and usually 3 snacks. I can't eat much at one sitting so I eat smaller meals and snacks in between. Works for me.
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3 meals. Sometimes if I'm still hungry a bedtime snack of berries and cream.
7am Breakfast: 2-3oz meat and 2 eggs, coffee w/cream
mid morning tea or water
12:30: Lunch: 4oz of either left over steak, chicken kabobs, can of kippers, can of tuna with mayo, or smoked salmon w/cream cheese.
mid afternoon tea or water
7pm: Dinner: 4-6 oz meat with a veg. dusted with parm cheese, coconut oil and spices - either broccoli, asparagus, sprouts, spinach, kale.
Losing about .6-1 pound a week on that routine. The more I stick to a routine the better I do. Once I start to skip meals or add treats it doesn't work for me.0 -
Three small meals and 2-3 snacks. Meals are around 300-500 calories, snacks around 100. I have breakfast around 6:30 (smoothie), small snack at 10 (cheese), lunch around 11:30-12 (corn tortilla with turkey and avocado), snack around 2 (almonds), sometimes another little snack around 3 (FF cottage cheese) if I plan to run after work, dinner around 6-7, depending on run (chicken, salad, omelet, whatever sounds good).0
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2 meals. I started out eating breakfast, but when ketosis got strong, I quit doing that. I may occasionally have a Quest bar with my coffee, but that's rare. Now I eat a small lunch and a big dinner (or vice versa) and the occasional keto dessert before bed. On weekends, I usually only eat one large meal in the evening on Saturday and kind of just graze on Sunday.
I learned over this weekend that cheesecake fluff, low carb or not, is evil and I can't be trusted around it.
And I'm probably making more tonight LOL.
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If you feel that way about cheesecake fluff, you may want to stay away from marscapone cheese. Just sayin'. I can probably happily live on just that.chaoticdreams wrote: »I learned over this weekend that cheesecake fluff, low carb or not, is evil and I can't be trusted around it. And I'm probably making more tonight LOL.
I eat two meals plus bulletproof coffee in the morning. Every once in a while if I am super-hungry I'll grab a cheese/ham roll up, but I drink water and broth between meals, so that mostly takes care of hunger.
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Usually two meals a day (lunch and dinner) with two or three snacks.0
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My "healthy eating" training (which obviously has been wrong until now) is that we are to eat 3 main meals a day and at least 2 snacks. Does the low carb group do that? Some days I get the protein and fats in, but not all the meals. Is that a problem for any of you?
Nope, don't worry about the conventional wisdom recommendation. If 3 meals and 2 snacks works for you, then go for it, but if you want to just do one meal a day, or even if you want to do the alternate day fasting style and basically skip a day, then eat three meals the next day, it ultimately doesn't matter, as long as it's what works for you.
Keep in mind, too, that "what works for you" goes for both not going over your calorie limit (on average) and not going under your average minimum. One thing that I found was, for a while, I was doing 1-2 meals per day, because I wasn't interested in food, but I was also starting to fatigue and see negative effects of not enough food, so I had to change it up.
Now, I do 2-3 meals a day. My "breakfast" is usually a fatty coffee drink, though I'll sometimes eat actual food. Lunch tends to be my biggest meal of the day, then I'll have something lighter for dinner. I don't generally feel the need to snack.
The 3 meals plus 2+ snacks recommendation comes from the idea that you need to constantly eat to keep your blood sugar stable. That is based on the sugar-burner metabolism, which is riding on a glucose-insulin roller coaster. Once you get off the roller coaster, you no longer have that requirement, because your blood sugar stays stable throughout the day, regardless of meals.0 -
If you feel that way about cheesecake fluff, you may want to stay away from marscapone cheese. Just sayin'. I can probably happily live on just that.
er.
Well, I love me some cream cheese. I do not love the calories that come with the cream cheese, so if marscapone cheese is anything like that, then yeah.... best I never find it in my little tiny town LOL.
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Cocoa powder stirred in marscapone...0
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I try for 3 meals per day as I'm prone to 1 not eating enough calories otherwise, and 2 I like being able to participate in other peoples lives with some kind of ease. My family revolves around dinner, and even though I'm not hungry most of the time for it, I sit, I munch some steak, we talk and have a good time.0
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I am balancing my eating with my partners eating, as in he is an evening snacker and it's kinda something we've always done - after dinner in front of the TV. I know evening snacking is not the best, but if you can't make a diet fit comfortably into your lifestyle and you feel you're missing something you used to love, you won't stick to it. So you find a way to make it work.
I normally have a coffee with butter blended in for breakfast, lunch when I get home from work (I work mornings), so about 1pm. We dinner at about 6pm. I make sure I have enough macros left that I can have usually a little tub of cream cheese (40g) and a handful of black olives as an evening snack. And I'll steal one or two of his cashews.0 -
Usually 2 meals within 6 hrs eating window. Sometimes it's 1 GIANT meal. It all depends on mood and schedule. If I'm doing a very strenuous workout, I'll do some protein first, but often I just do some BCAA and maybe CO, then train «fasted».
In general, IMO: Balance flexibility with carrying out your plan: No flexibility, and it's easy to jump off the train. Life happens, blablabla. Low execution or committing to plan yields so-so results. Find your sweet spot, but no pain, no gain. Oops, that might not be the best idiom for a dieting board 0
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