Big breakfast, lunch, or dinner?

Personal experience and clinical research has shown me that it's all a matter of preference. There are no "hard rules" on meals with the only exception that you don't exceed your calorie restriction if you're trying to lose weight. And doing this a long time, I've ventured into just about every type of strategy (legit or not) to find out for myself.

A.C.E. Certified Personal/Group FitnessTrainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition

I like to use lunch as my biggest meal. I run/workout in the morning so I like to keep it fairly light before that. I don't have a snack between breakfast and lunch so I'm pretty hungry for lunch. Then I'll eat a light dinner since the heavier lunch will stay with me for awhile. then I have a light snack before bed.

I always eat light breakfast and lunch and have a healthy sized dinner. Usually like 60% calories go to dinner, sometimes more.

Meal timing means little to nothing to me as far as results; that being said... From personal experience.

1. Breakfast. I eat something -- usually a granola bar to start my day
2. Snacks.. I usually eat a few things at intervals just because I like to
3. Large breakfast? Not often -- not so much the morning person... If I do eat larger breakfast, I tend to not eat much lunch, if any.
4. Large Lunch? Not too often but I usually eat a substantial lunch.
5. Large Supper? My weight the following morning will reflect a significant weight gain BUT this is only temporary and not a true weight gain.
6. Work out. I usually eat something significant before a work out -- if not, I don't work out very well. Particularly on upper body days, I tend to drink a protein shake during the workout... seems to help. Particularly if I have a significant run on the treadmill, I almost always eat something afterward... something carby... I have to replace any extreme physical activity with some kind of snack afterward or I get shaky... (usually) -- if I do a significant run without having eaten anything before hand or not having eaten supper (for a nighttime workout), I may get a little lightheaded at the end of the workout.

In short, I eat and have maintained fairly well though I have not lost a lot lately... Summer is coming though so hopefully, I'll trim down a bit soon.

I used to do the 5-meals-a-day thing, but it didn't work too well for me. I felt hungry all the time and literally all I could think of was food. I would always end up eating more than I was supposed to.

Now I eat almost all of my calories before 1:00 o'clock. Maybe I'll have something at 3:00, but later in the afternoon I really never feel hungry. I used to have BED, and eating in the mornings until my point of satisfaction, and stopping right there,has helped a lot. The thing is that every time I ate something during the evening, it would trigger a binging episode. For some reason it's way easier to control myself in the mornings.

I don't know if that's really healthy, but it's the way I'm able to manage my calorie intake.

I like to have more calories at tea time.- probably about half to sixty percent.

This isn't a planned thing, it's just what works well for me - if I have a big lunch (for example, we occasionally go out for lunch at work) I feel quite sluggish and tired in the afternoon and am as hungry as I'd usually be come tea time.

Big breakfasts I can deal with - however then I tend to skip lunch. This is what usually happens when we go away for a weekend break or something (but I don't tend to be over fussed on counting calories then)

It also helps having tea as my main meal as dh isn't particularly watching his weight - so I cook something healthy but reasonably sized for the both of us. If I had my main meal at lunch, I would have to cook two meals or he would live on chicken dippers :-)

For me I try to eat bfast lunch and dinner to aim for 500 cals each. Im not a snacker and I like to eat and be done with it. Sometimes my bfast isnt as big but ill eat an early dinner snack instead. Lots of people say thats bad eat more snacks but i find im not hungry between meals and thats what im going to aim for when my weight is off per meal. What im learning is do what works for u.

I have been eating 4 meals a day and keep each between 300-400 calories and 5-6 carbs each. Personally for me right now I don't want a large meal because I am trying to only eat until I am no longer hungry.

Big breakfast, lunch AND dinner

I like this .

I try eat a good amount of food around a weights workout.

I generally have a good amount after a run (typically around an hour's worth of running) as a 'refuel' - but that's partly just because I don't want to eat the calories I've burnt until I've burnt them!