Questions on some personal preferences

min531

So here is my question for all of you. Do you think it's better to eat a big breakfast and smaller meals throughout the day? Also, when you workout and burn calories, do you eat more to make up for some of those burned? There are so many mixed opinions on food and exercise, so I thought I would ask for all of your opinions.

zavrrr

IMO, the breakfast thing is really a personal preference. i've seen some articles recently saying that the impact is probably less than it's been hyped up (here's one: http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/early/2014/06/04/ajcn.114.089573.abstract). for me, i'm an absolute wreck in the mornings & don't like to work out early, so i try to just have decent grab-and-go options around, and eat more of my calories in the afternoon/evening.

I think one of the reasons you tend to see a correlation with breakfast and weight loss is that people who regularly eat a good breakfast are more likely to be generally more thoughtful/prepared about their meals in general.

in terms of eating back exercise calories, i use my TDEE with exercise factored in so i try not to, but it sort of depends on how many we're talking about. if i burned 300 calories on the treadmill, i do my best to not eat those back (or at least not more than half), but if i did something like go for a super long hike/bike ride, i usually do eat some of those back since it's outside the norm for me.

changsofa

For breakfast, I do either "coffee + small bite" or "normal cereal w milk or yogurt" about 50-50 of the time. I like breakfast and don't sweat how much I eat each time as long as I plan ahead I eat within my calories.

As a joke though, I heard that your body shape could reflect the proportion of food eaten at each meal:
A pyramid for small breakfast, large dinner = large bottom
A upside down pyramid for large breakfast, small dinner = large chests

I don't eat back the calories cause I don't think exercise estimates of calories are accurate. I prefer to keep things simple and be mindful of just one thing: eating at the limit of my MFP calories (Also, around /r/xxfitness you can find a way to calculate your baseline calories, and MFP helps you figure out how much at the deficit you should eat if you want to lose rate a ## lbs per week).

jpdanh

It all really depends on you and what helps keep you on the right track. On weekdays I workout fasted in the mornings and have a protein shake and maybe a protein bar afterwards. At work, I'll have a normal lunch, and then most nights I train again in the evenings, so I'm busy and not thinking of food.

Weekends, if I eat breakfast, I'll normally want to eat more the rest of the day...so I'll push breakfast back to more of a brunch on weekends and then find something for myself to do to keep busy (more training, parks, drawing, etc).

min531

Thanks everyone. I actually hate breakfast for the most part so I don't eat it. I agree about calories burned during exercise being an estimate so I usually don't eat them back either. I already know my macros and calories and all that. I was just curious as to what others do. I really only eat when I'm hungry so if I'm super hungry at lunch, then I eat most of my calories then. If I could just get motivated to work out, I think my progress would go a bit faster lol.