Is it bad to just eat one large meal a day?

I had a Great Dane who ate like this and lived a long, healthy life. BS aside, it's not a problem if it meets your goals.

BFDeal wrote: »

LOL So you eat 90% of your calories first thing in the morning and then 10% right before bed? How many calories? Just curious. I'm guessing not very many.

I've never heard this ... Crazy if you ask me ... But hey

I usually eat 60-80% of my calories at lunchtime but have a protein shake after training in the morning and another one at around 7pm. I try and eat low carb overall, keeping carbs to 60-100grams and protein is at least 80-100g.

If I eat out I save 90% of my calories for that, like tomorrow I'm out with friends at an Italian restaurant so il have 2 slices of garlic bread, beef in mushroom sauce with veg and a couple of glasses of wine. I'll ask them to serve my lunch without the fries and also to serve the sauce separately.

Sounds fine to me aslong as calories are good.

pollymex5000 wrote: »

Eating just one meal a day will throw off your metabolism (making weight loss slow down), and it will throw your glucos levels up and down like crazy. It's best to eat something every two to four hours. Good luck.

OP, pay no attention to this. Your metabolism isn't really affected by meal timings. It never stops working (until you die) so it's perfectly fine to just eat when you're hungry. I personally don't eat until 4pm some days because I'm not hungry until then, then consume all my calories at 4pm, 6pm and 9pm. Other days when I have to get up early, I'll have a snack at 11 and lunch at 1 etc. It's all about personal preference.

I'm playing around with IF and meal timing at the moment. My flavour of IF is restricting my eating to between 12- 8pm, and eating my calories over 2 large meals. This is just my flavour of IF, and there are many others. The book Eat Stop Eat by Brad Pilon is a good place to get a better idea about fasting. His flavour of IF is a 24 hour fast once/ twice a week. 5:2 is restricted calories (500/ 600) on 2 days, and regular eating on the other 5.

When you hear things like 16:8, 14:10, the first number is the number of hours of the fast and the second number the eating hours. Leangains is 16:8 (or 14:10 for women), and the warrior diet is a little more complicated as the author advocates eating certain things during the 'fasting'/ under-eating window (under eating window is the authors preferred way of viewing it). Other than that, the warrior diet is somewhere around a 16- 18 hour 'fast'.

Check it out, and see for yourself. The reason IF helps drop weight is that by virtue of the reduced eating window, you are most likely eating less, thus weight loss. There are a bunch of health virtues of IF that goes beyond just weight loss though, so do your homework and draw your own conclusions I would say. There's some good resources out there, and some good groups here to look.

The only thing I would add, is there may be benefits of eating more of your calories closer to the evening. These potential benefits are of the health variety as opposed to just simple weight loss, and tie into the bodies nighttime restorative and growth processes.

For weight loss though, it's all about creating a calorie deficit. As such, IF can be a good way to do this for people. I'm finding it is for me. As above though, there is potentially more to IF than just weight loss also.

Good luck with things. I find trying out different things to find out what works best for us individually is a very good thing, and wish you luck finding what works best for you

Added:

http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/group/100058-5-2-fasting

http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/group/49-intermittent-fasting

By the way, you may face hormonal issues the longer the fast, so just bear that in mind too, if you're experimenting in some way that's largely different to what you have been used to. That is why the fasting length recommendations tend to be slightly longer for men, as it seems to be that men can tolerate longer fasts than women due to the aforementioned hormonal aspects. This may or may not hold true for you.

ashli83 wrote: »

Omg how do you not eat during all that time ? If I did that my whole metabolism would be off.. So what exactly do you eat that consists of that many calories ? I don't see how people say that's ok if getting enough calories Bc you could eat two candy bars and get enough calories for the day you need !

Your body adjusts to it.

Honestly, the whole concept of three meals is pretty recent. Many of our ancestors thrived off just two, or even one. My sister did her research topic for Medieval history on their diet. Many families would eat tea and toast for breakfast, and then not eat again until supper. Which wasn't the same time as dinner traditionally is now. Anyway. It's not a new concept, nor is it too crazy.

If it works for you there is nothing wrong with it, but I would not be able to go through my day to day activities without eating something small every 2 to 3 hours.

I think the protein intake point is a good one. You can only digest a certain amount of protein per meal, so it will only grab what it can as it passes by. If you eat the right amount of calories and you eat it all in one go, you'll end up absorbing a small amount of protein but more of the easily digestible things like fats and sugars, then you may be smaller, but will be made up of more fats than muscles. ie you'll be small but squishy!

If it works for you and you are getting all the nutrients needed to remain healthy then go for it. I could not do it because I like to graze through out the day. That just works best for me.

I eat 2 decent meals a day, I prefer to just eat until I'm satisfied at breakfast and that keeps me full enough to not need lunch- I'm a healthy weight