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

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  • icrushit
    icrushit Posts: 773 Member
    edited January 2015
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    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 :smile:

    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.
  • SomeNights246
    SomeNights246 Posts: 807 Member
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    Last semester, I had morning classes. I was on campus from 9 am to about 3 pm. Afterward, my sister and I would sometimes stay out paying bills and running errands until about 5. I had a small breakfast. If I didn't, I'd be famished (one of the classes was a PE one), but other than that I wouldn't generally eat until dinner. In which I'd eat most of my day's calories in one sitting. While my body had trouble adjusting to eating so much in one sitting (health related), it didn't cause weight gain as I was still eating within maintenance.
  • SomeNights246
    SomeNights246 Posts: 807 Member
    edited January 2015
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    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.
  • bunnypy
    bunnypy Posts: 109 Member
    edited January 2015
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    Ya ur tummy even flattens, I have 100 calories (mostly a fruit) in the morning around 800 calories for lunch then around 350 calories (yoghurt mostly) for supper, and it works perrrrfectly for me :)
  • FitPhillygirl
    FitPhillygirl Posts: 7,124 Member
    edited January 2015
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    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.
  • Spiderkeys
    Spiderkeys Posts: 338 Member
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    In my experience, this is how I got obese, and I couldn't understand why I kept piling on pounds, I mean I only eat 1 meal a day, what's going on ?... Until I realised it was always a big meal and it was a night before bed, and an ate.an average of 5'000 calories per day. Worse time of the day to even go near food, and always couldn't sleep if I couldn't go to bed feeling full and satisfied, but still even today if I ate all my 2'000 calories in 1 hit would just confuse my body, and probably begin to gain, so I keep at 2 meals a day and sometimes a little snacking in between, works for me.
  • agentcranberry
    agentcranberry Posts: 3
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    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! :)
  • JenniDaisy
    JenniDaisy Posts: 526 Member
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    Spiderkeys wrote: »
    In my experience, this is how I got obese, and I couldn't understand why I kept piling on pounds, I mean I only eat 1 meal a day, what's going on ?... Until I realised it was always a big meal and it was a night before bed, and an ate.an average of 5'000 calories per day. Worse time of the day to even go near food, and always couldn't sleep if I couldn't go to bed feeling full and satisfied, but still even today if I ate all my 2'000 calories in 1 hit would just confuse my body, and probably begin to gain, so I keep at 2 meals a day and sometimes a little snacking in between, works for me.

    That's not how your body works. If the human body got 'confused' we would not have lasted this long as a species.
  • Roxiegirl2008
    Roxiegirl2008 Posts: 756 Member
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    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.
  • itsclobberintime
    itsclobberintime Posts: 164 Member
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    Not at all provided that it is sustainable for you.
  • Tea_Mistress
    Tea_Mistress Posts: 105 Member
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    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
  • ndj1979
    ndj1979 Posts: 29,136 Member
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    nope…as long as you hit your calorie/micro/macro goal for the day that is fine….
  • ndj1979
    ndj1979 Posts: 29,136 Member
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    myfatass78 wrote: »
    It matters when you think about protein. I haven't looked at your diary so making a general statement. If you are eating all your protein in one meal, your body cannot absorb it all at once. The body can handle about 50grams of protein at a time.

    totally false…I sometimes get 60-90 grams of protein in one meal and have no issues…

    away with you broscience!
  • ndj1979
    ndj1979 Posts: 29,136 Member
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    Spiderkeys wrote: »
    In my experience, this is how I got obese, and I couldn't understand why I kept piling on pounds, I mean I only eat 1 meal a day, what's going on ?... Until I realised it was always a big meal and it was a night before bed, and an ate.an average of 5'000 calories per day. Worse time of the day to even go near food, and always couldn't sleep if I couldn't go to bed feeling full and satisfied, but still even today if I ate all my 2'000 calories in 1 hit would just confuse my body, and probably begin to gain, so I keep at 2 meals a day and sometimes a little snacking in between, works for me.

    this is just wrong….

    if that was case then all the people in concentration camps would get "fat" when they ate their one meal on every third day ….

  • ndj1979
    ndj1979 Posts: 29,136 Member
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    azulvioleta6 wrote: »
    Metabolism is much more complicated than CICO. I think it might be a good idea to run this by your doctor.

    I would worry that this might set you up for binge eating or other types of disordered eating. Did you just start doing this for dieting or have you always eaten this way?

    meal timing has no impact on metabolism…

    plenty of people do intermittent fasting and lose weight, and have no medical issues...

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