I eat starting from about noon, then I eat the biggest meal of the day. And something smaller at around 7PM. That's it. Don't worry about "meals" . It does make it harder to fit in, because culturally, structure our day around "meals". Remember, if you're in ketosis, cravings go away, and fasting, ie postponing to eat, becomes way easier, so you'll find there's much more flexibility. I went out sailing one day, and postponed eating until 4PM. Not by design, but that was how it turned out. That did surprise me!

I normally eat only two meals a day, it feels much better not to be constantly eating. I think with the high fat it's easy to feel full and not need to eat for extended periods. Fasting till lunch time has lots of health benefits.

I eat 3 meals. I can eat less carbs a meal & get better bg#s.
I get 1800 calories so they're nice sized meals.
I eat by the clock, I don't get hungry much.

OR

I think what you're doing now is perfectly fine. It's very typical to eat only two meals while eating low carb. That's pretty much what I do. Only occasionally do I find myself eating a breakfast and usually because it's the weekend and I'm cooking for the family and the sausage smells too good! But then I feel stuffed and lazy all day!

The answers are going to vary widely on this one.

A lot of people find they aren't hungry enough to eat until noon or later. Some have BPC coffee (or keto coffee).
I've tried to coast by on low-calorie coffee until noon. It makes me want to kill people. I can do it if I have fatty keto coffee, but some would argue with me that the coffee is actually breakfast. However, I'm usually pretty darn cranky and also ready to kill people if I have to go past noon. But I can make it at least until then before Mrs. Hyde comes out.

Most days I eat 3 meals. Sometimes I have 1 snack. It just depends on breakfast for me. Now, if I eat a fatty-meat-only breakfast (which is super fat concentrated) I can often go until about 3 in the afternoon until I need to eat again. But I'm obsessed with OMM's (mug muffins) right now, so I've been eating those. They don't carry me as far. So I end up with more meals.


There are people who only eat one meal a day and are highly satisfied with that lifestyle. I do wish for the simplicity of that sometimes. But like I've said, if I don't eat regularly, my family is sorry.

Two meals a day for me on most days, occasionally a 3rd that's really small compared to the other two and could just be a "snack".

One meal per day is my norm now. I have evolved from eating 3 meals, then down to 2, and now I feel best when eating 1 meal at supper. At that meal I eat until I am satisfactorily full but not stuffed.

I eat 2-5 times per day. I count my coffee as a meal since I add cream and protein powder to it; that's often 2 meals of my day. I usually have a sit down lunch and dinner, and about half the time I have an after dinner snack.

2 @ day for me. One if I eat too much on the first one.

Dan the Man from Michigan
Keto / Water Fasting / E.A.S.Y. Exercise Program
113 pounds down, 22 to go. 13 months on diet

I eat 3 "meals" and usually 3 snacks. I can't eat much at one sitting so I eat smaller meals and snacks in between. Works for me.

Three small meals and 2-3 snacks. Meals are around 300-500 calories, snacks around 100. I have breakfast around 6:30 (smoothie), small snack at 10 (cheese), lunch around 11:30-12 (corn tortilla with turkey and avocado), snack around 2 (almonds), sometimes another little snack around 3 (FF cottage cheese) if I plan to run after work, dinner around 6-7, depending on run (chicken, salad, omelet, whatever sounds good).

chaoticdreams wrote: »

I learned over this weekend that cheesecake fluff, low carb or not, is evil and I can't be trusted around it. And I'm probably making more tonight LOL.

If you feel that way about cheesecake fluff, you may want to stay away from marscapone cheese. Just sayin'. I can probably happily live on just that.

I eat two meals plus bulletproof coffee in the morning. Every once in a while if I am super-hungry I'll grab a cheese/ham roll up, but I drink water and broth between meals, so that mostly takes care of hunger.

Batlady49 wrote: »

My "healthy eating" training (which obviously has been wrong until now) is that we are to eat 3 main meals a day and at least 2 snacks. Does the low carb group do that? Some days I get the protein and fats in, but not all the meals. Is that a problem for any of you?

Nope, don't worry about the conventional wisdom recommendation. If 3 meals and 2 snacks works for you, then go for it, but if you want to just do one meal a day, or even if you want to do the alternate day fasting style and basically skip a day, then eat three meals the next day, it ultimately doesn't matter, as long as it's what works for you.

Keep in mind, too, that "what works for you" goes for both not going over your calorie limit (on average) and not going under your average minimum. One thing that I found was, for a while, I was doing 1-2 meals per day, because I wasn't interested in food, but I was also starting to fatigue and see negative effects of not enough food, so I had to change it up.

Now, I do 2-3 meals a day. My "breakfast" is usually a fatty coffee drink, though I'll sometimes eat actual food. Lunch tends to be my biggest meal of the day, then I'll have something lighter for dinner. I don't generally feel the need to snack.

The 3 meals plus 2+ snacks recommendation comes from the idea that you need to constantly eat to keep your blood sugar stable. That is based on the sugar-burner metabolism, which is riding on a glucose-insulin roller coaster. Once you get off the roller coaster, you no longer have that requirement, because your blood sugar stays stable throughout the day, regardless of meals.

Cocoa powder stirred in marscapone...

I am balancing my eating with my partners eating, as in he is an evening snacker and it's kinda something we've always done - after dinner in front of the TV. I know evening snacking is not the best, but if you can't make a diet fit comfortably into your lifestyle and you feel you're missing something you used to love, you won't stick to it. So you find a way to make it work.

I normally have a coffee with butter blended in for breakfast, lunch when I get home from work (I work mornings), so about 1pm. We dinner at about 6pm. I make sure I have enough macros left that I can have usually a little tub of cream cheese (40g) and a handful of black olives as an evening snack. And I'll steal one or two of his cashews.