Calories for dinner and question on weight gain this morning!?

mandietippets

How many calories should dinner be? I'm on a 1500 calorie diet and have been below calories most days and dinner and dinners are averaging between 350-500 calories. I'm also exercising about 45 minutes a day. I'm wondering if I'm doing something wrong I've been steadily losing 2-4 lbs a week but gained 2 pounds this morning and am stewing over it!! I've only been exercising regularly for about 3 weeks now and don't know if it's muscle or if I'm just not doing this right. Would love people's advice and stories! Thanks!

arditarose

Weight fluctuates and weight loss is not always linear. A jump upward on the scale can be water retention from increased sodium or exercise the day before, as well as nearing your period.

As far as how many calories to eat for dinner. That is up to you. 350-500 sounds about right for me personally.

rileysowner

Weight loss is not linear. Weight can flucuate as much as 5 pounds even when a person remains in a deficit and fat amounts are going down.

piggysmalls333

Despite what many think, timing does matter. Your lightest meal should be dinner so your body has time to metabolize at night. Your high calorie intakes try to do in the morning or right before your workout so you burn it up and help it break down right away.

mandietippets

Thanks everyone it's nice to hear other people's opinions and experiences.

abatonfan

piggysmalls333 wrote: »

Despite what many think, timing does matter. Your lightest meal should be dinner so your body has time to metabolize at night. Your high calorie intakes try to do in the morning or right before your workout so you burn it up and help it break down right away.

Your metabolism is constantly running. Meal timing doesn't matter, because ultimately the calories you consume be used within a 24-hour period (unless you consume more than your TDEE). We eat, and our body releases some hormones that allows it to store the energy from food we consume so that it can use it to fuel itself during periods when we're not eating (like insulin being released by the pancreas in the presence of carbohydrates or a blood glucose level above a certain set point that allows the liver to store excess glucose as glycogen). We fast (even if for a few hours), our bodies release hormones that allow it to use the reserves it stored up from when we ate last (like glucagon being released by the pancreas in response to a BG level below the set point, which promotes the breakdown of glycogen into glucose in order to raise BG levels and provide energy for our organs and brain).

rileysowner

piggysmalls333 wrote: »

Despite what many think, timing does matter. Your lightest meal should be dinner so your body has time to metabolize at night. Your high calorie intakes try to do in the morning or right before your workout so you burn it up and help it break down right away.

No it doesn't. Your metabolism does not shut down at night. In fact if one does a heavy lifting program, much of the muscle repair happens at night. Stop spreading misinformation. Meal timing and meal frequency do affect fat loss except in terms of whether they help a person adhere to their calorie goal.

piggysmalls333

@abatonfan I know quite a few national champion body builders that would disagree

DanSTL82

Timing doesn't matter. You can eat all 1500 calories for breakfast and not eat the rest of the day, or you can eat 100 calories 15 times a day, or you can eat all 1500 calories right before you go to bed. Your results will be exactly the same no matter what.

ForeverSunshine09

I eat over my half my cals for the day at dinner which ranges from 6pm to 10:30pm. I have lost 37 lbs steadily. So my body would disagree.

arditarose

piggysmalls333 wrote: »

@abatonfan I know quite a few national champion body builders that would disagree

What you stated above is not true. If you're in a deficit, you'll lose weight, regardless of when you eat.

piggysmalls333

Ok so I knew this was going to happen but really was just trying to help you with what my own experience has been and the advice of the professional nutritionists, trainers and bodybuilders in my life. To each his own! Yes you will still lose weight, but probably not as fast. Why don't you try it one way for a week and another for a different week and see if it makes a difference for you.

arditarose

piggysmalls333 wrote: »

Ok so I knew this was going to happen but really was just trying to help you with what my own experience has been and the advice of the professional nutritionists, trainers and bodybuilders in my life. To each his own! Yes you will still lose weight, but probably not as fast. Why don't you try it one way for a week and another for a different week and see if it makes a difference for you.

So we have two people with the same exact stats, eating the same amount of calories, except one consumes more of the calories in the morning...why would this person would lose weight faster? Can you explain? Perhaps you can provide links to scientific studies as well. I am interested. Thank you.

AnvilHead

piggysmalls333 wrote: »

Despite what many think, timing does matter. Your lightest meal should be dinner so your body has time to metabolize at night. Your high calorie intakes try to do in the morning or right before your workout so you burn it up and help it break down right away.

Provide a link to some randomized controlled trials which prove this. What you're saying isn't true, I don't care what bodybuilder, nutritionist or trainer told it to you. Your metabolism works 24 hours per day and if food comes in it will digest/process it regardless of what time it is. Your body doesn't have a watch and food intake/calorie expenditure isn't somehow tallied on a daily basis - it's an ongoing process with no start or end point (except birth and death).

The part of your quote I bolded demonstrates a profound misunderstanding of substrate utilization and how the digestive system works. That's not even exotic secret bodybuilder stuff, that's physiology 101. Think what you want and do what you want, but you're mistaken and don't understand how the body works.

mandietippets

I was under the impression that as long as you were within your calories you were ok. Most of these posts seem to verify that so thank you! All my meals are fairly evenly distributed with calories but my dinners do tend to be a tad higher Than my other meals. I guess everyone's body is different and that's why I wanted to get people's opinion/experiences.

AnvilHead

mandietippets wrote: »

I was under the impression that as long as you were within your calories you were ok. Most of these posts seem to verify that so thank you! All my meals are fairly evenly distributed with calories but my dinners do tend to be a tad higher Than my other meals. I guess everyone's body is different and that's why I wanted to get people's opinion/experiences.

Everybody's body isn't different, but personal preferences certainly are. If somebody stops eating at a certain time because it keeps them from snacking or makes it easier to go to sleep or prevents acid reflux/indigestion or whatever, there's nothing wrong with that. But there's no research indicating that stopping eating at a certain time (or a certain number of hours before bed or whatever) has any effect upon weight loss. If you're in a caloric deficit, you lose weight - it doesn't matter what time you take the calories in.


Actually, I'll address it in a little more detail, in reference to @piggysmalls333 's post. Meal timing can be of importance to very, very lean people seeking to get leaner (e.g. pre-contest bodybuilders trying to get to low single-digit bodyfat), or for bodybuilders who are near their genetic muscular potential and trying to eke out every last possible bit of gains they possibly can. It can also be of importance to athletes who compete in ultra-endurance competitions (marathons, ultra-marathons, Ironman, etc.). Those people are outliers and are so close to the razor's edge that very small things make a difference to them. So if she heard about meal timing from a national champion bodybuilder, that would make sense (although a national champion bodybuilder is most likely also "assisted" in their weight loss by substances such as clenbuterol, T3, DNP, etc.). But to 99.9% of the rest of the non-elite athlete population, any effect from it will be so small as to not even be worth worrying about. Hence the common sentiment that meal timing is irrelevant - because if it's truly relevant to you, you already know it is, why it is, and how to do it.


Here's a graphic from Alan Aragon (a well-known trainer/researcher) regarding his take on meal timing:

WinoGelato

OP the amount of cals at dinner is really a matter of personal preference. Some people evenly distribute among their main meals and have a small snack or two, some people prefer to eat a big breakfast and a smaller lunch and dinner, some people don't eat breakfast at all and save more of their cals for late in the day.

I usually eat 1800-2100 or so cals (maintenance) and I like having dinner as my largest meal of the day. Mine looks like:
Breakfast 250-350
Lunch 400-600
Afternoon snack 200
Dinner 600-800
After dinner wine plus dessert 200-300

I lost 30 lbs eating this way (usually 1600-1800) and am currently maintaining.

cityruss

piggysmalls333 wrote: »

Despite what many think, timing does matter. Your lightest meal should be dinner so your body has time to metabolize at night. Your high calorie intakes try to do in the morning or right before your workout so you burn it up and help it break down right away.

That is not how the human body works.

piggysmalls333 wrote: »

@abatonfan I know quite a few national champion body builders that would disagree

I'm sure the primobolan and winstrol have little to do with their leanness and it's all to do with them eating a small dinner.

Anyway, can we have their names and contact details so we can verify your claims and have these people provide us with the studies to back up their claims?

AnvilHead

cityruss wrote: »

I'm sure the primobolan and winstrol have little to do with their leanness and it's all to do with them eating a small dinner.

Anyway, can we have their names and contact details so we can verify your claims and have these people provide us with the studies to back up their claims?

Truthfully, a high-level/pro bodybuilder is the worst possible person for Joe/Jane Average to take advice from.

#1 - They have superior genetics in the first place (or they wouldn't be competing at that high a level).

#2 - They're about 99% likely to be juiced to the gills (steroids/PEDs).

#3 - Many of them succeed in spite of what they do rather than because of what they do (because of #1 and #2 above). They're so jacked on steroids that they could make gains by walking into the gym and looking at the weights. Yet because of the enhanced recovery afforded by PEDs, they can get away with doing workouts at volumes, frequencies and intensities that would crush the average 'natural' lifter.

#4 - When they cut (lose fat), they're using cutting agents (Clen, DNP, T3, etc.) which allow them to drop fat faster and retain far more muscle than any 'natural' trainer.


They're not Joe/Jane average who's obese/overweight, 30-45% bodyfat and trying to get into some reasonable semblance of shape. They're elite, genetically-gifted and drug-enhanced athletes at/near single-digit bodyfat and pushing the limits of what's humanly possible in physique. The tiny, nearly inconsequential things they do to ride that razor's edge won't do zip squat for Joe/Jane Average. It would be like saying that a child just learning how to hit a baseball off a tee should concern himself with what an elite professional baseball player is doing to increase his bat speed by .01 seconds. Learn to hit the ball first, kid - those tiny little details aren't going to matter for a long, long time (if ever).