Breakfast like a King...

Found this little tidbit "Breakfast is exactly what the name suggests - Break Fast. It’s breaking the fast your body had while you were asleep for 8 hours (or however long you normally do). It is the first meal of the day, usually eaten in the morning (assuming you slept at night). If you’ve got a twisted sleep cycle (perhaps due to working on shift, etc) and you sleep in the afternoons, then your breakfast will be the first meal you have when you wake up. Breakfast does not follow the time of the day, but your sleep cycle, and helps kick-start your metabolism levels for the day, which is crucial to weight loss."

Oh... heh... I had always assumed that the two words "break" and "fast" meant eating quickly and hurrying out the door. This makes much more sense... :laugh: Shows what kind of lifestyle I have!:yawn:

"Breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, dinner like a pauper."

I try to keep my calories sort of similar, but I really want to eat a lot in the early afternoon :laugh: There is a similar saying I grew up with in Chinese that translates roughly to "Morning eat well, noon eat full, night eat less"

Which means in the morning, you don't have to eat a lot, but you should eat GOOD foods like eggs, fruit, whole grains, etc. At lunch you should eat until you are full so by dinner you do not need to eat so much. Of course, if your workout happens to be at night, this will not apply, but the saying is more for daily life than for dieting so at night there is less time to burn off the calories from a big dinner

okay here's my take and I may be way off but for the most part it works for me. I am 5'4" and weight 109lbs. I have a small but very curvy frame. I eat like a pig (all vegan diet) in saying that, I tend to eat over half my daily calories between breakie and a morning snack. Also I eat every 2 hours or so all day long. BIG breakie though (normally my home made granola with a pot or 4 of coffee) then fruit and nuts for a snack and I never wimp out, I get all the calories I can get. I run all day long between meetings, a 3 year old a 4 year old, 5 dogs to be walked and a company to run. So I agree with the theory personally. It took me awhile to get used to eating that much in the mornings with out feeling overful and tired, but now days that I skip/skimp on breakfast are horrid and I always always always go WAY over on cals. Just my two cents... it's worth it to eat more in the mornings

Out of curiosity, how many calories does your BIG breakfast end up being? I tend to follow a similar eating pattern, small, frequent snack/meals.... first off, coffee, then breakfast, then nuts/berries, etc. But it's easy to freak out if the breakfast is over 300...

For the most part my breakie's are around/over 400 cals. Then maybe 50-100 for snacks 200-400 for lunch, another 50-150 for snacks and then dinner is anywhere from 200-300 (there are days that I am over this, but they are the days that I am running around non stop)

If I eat a lot at breakfast, it makes me want to eat lots throughout the whole day. So, I tend to keep my breakfasts at around 150 cals and my lunches at around 500. That gives me a bigger chunk for dinner. I seem to be pretty successful with this plan, and I have a feeling that eating a ton earlier in the day with a tiny dinner would not be something I could stick with....

Your body quickly adjusts to it. I used to be the same way, but I held out and stuck to my game plan and within a week my body had adjusted.

I just posted a blog about this a few days ago!! I got the saying out of a book called "Food Rules" by Michael Pollan. And today is my first day of eating more calories. It's definitely a change. I have already eaten 400 calories and it's only 9:30! I usually hit 400 calories after I eat lunch. I'm curious to see how this will affect my weight loss. I would like to join the Breakfast King/Queen group.

We in America put a lot of emphasis on having a big dinner, while people in other countries tend to have their big meal earlier in the day (breakfast or lunch), that may be one of the reasons why our obesity rates are higher than other countries.

I've decided to do try this, but with a twist. Not only am I consuming most of my calories in the morning and tapering them as the day goes on, I'm completely reversing my meals.

That's right. I'm eating a typical "dinner" for my first morning meal and a typical "breakfast" for my evening meal. (It helps that I live alone, so no one's there to complain about it.)

Today is day 2. I did feel like I had more energy throughout the day yesterday and fell asleep a lot quicker last night (though I'm also really tired overall AND I took cough medicine). We'll see how today goes.

I know I can't do the whole routine EVERY day - on race days and long run days I'm NOT eating a full dinner. But I typically eat more calories on those mornings anyway - just with things like peanut butter sandwiches, etc. for energy. And I'm sure eventually (like when I get tired of getting up earlier to make "dinner-type" food first thing) I'll go back to more traditional meals, but try to keep the calories higher in the morning and lower as the day goes on.