How do you split your calories over the day?
thelastnightingale
Posts: 725 Member
Just curious. We all know the saying 'breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, dinner like a pauper', but what works for you in practice?
I've found my habits have totally changed over the two months I've been on this journey so far. I wouldn't say I breakfast like a king (or a queen!), but I do now always have breakfast, and it represents up to 33% of my calories for the day. It wasn't a conscious decision, but after gradually tweaking with my mealtimes/calories, I find it helps me manage my appetite and energy over the day better than when I used to only have black coffee and not eat anything.
I've also stopped saving calories for snacks and instead just added those calories to my three main meals.
I definitely split my calories over the day very differently to when I was just gaining weight. Back then, it was the opposite to the saying - I skipped breakfast, had lunch like a prince, and dinner like a king. The bulk of my calories definitely went on dinner, and I guess probably because I was so hungry by that point, I made some really bad choices.
So, what do you do?
I've found my habits have totally changed over the two months I've been on this journey so far. I wouldn't say I breakfast like a king (or a queen!), but I do now always have breakfast, and it represents up to 33% of my calories for the day. It wasn't a conscious decision, but after gradually tweaking with my mealtimes/calories, I find it helps me manage my appetite and energy over the day better than when I used to only have black coffee and not eat anything.
I've also stopped saving calories for snacks and instead just added those calories to my three main meals.
I definitely split my calories over the day very differently to when I was just gaining weight. Back then, it was the opposite to the saying - I skipped breakfast, had lunch like a prince, and dinner like a king. The bulk of my calories definitely went on dinner, and I guess probably because I was so hungry by that point, I made some really bad choices.
So, what do you do?
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Replies
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My breakfast, lunch and dinner pretty much the same calories. I tend not to eat after 7pm. Seems to work for me.3
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My eating habits has changed a lot since losing 80 pounds and my early years of maintaining.
For the last few years I usually eat a larger mid morning breakfast and a larger evening dinner. This works great for me as I'm a volume eater and it fits in well with my workout schedule.
On those really active days I sometimes need to add in a smaller meal for the calories.
But I listen to my body. Some days eating 4 smaller meals work and others one big meal spread out over a couple of hours is fine.
My maintenance calories are high, so I focus on making sure I'm eating enough to reach my goal at the end of the week.8 -
I try to be consistent and tend to have the same foods daily, When I’m on maintenance I want to build upon an easy eating plan without any big changes. I’m on 1470 and split it like this:
Breakfast 300cals, invariably fruit and yoghurt or cereal and milk
Lunch 400 cals, and either soup and roll or sandwich and crisps
Dinner 670 cals, whatever I fancy
Evening 100 cals could be a glass of wine, double vodka and diet mixer or a sweet snack3 -
I don't measure my calorie intake by meal and try to keep it the same each day. I go for daily total only.
My breakfast tends to be lower because I want to leave as much room as possible for the rest of the day. I don't know if the day will be light and I won't need many snacks or if I will be very hungry mid afternoon. Keeping options open helps me to know I have leeway if need be.2 -
I usually do about 1200 calories up until dinner (breakfast, snack, lunch, snack) then about 1500-1800 between dinner and dessert.3
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I prefer to go to bed with food in my stomach, otherwise I can't sleep. I only eat in the morning if I'm hungry. I'll usually have a small lunch at 11am and multiple snacks throughout the day. I usually split dinner into two portions, one at around 6pm and one at around 8pm, and then I'll have a snack of some sort right before bed at around 10:30pm.3
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Just a cup of coffee in the morning, lunch around noon, dinner at 5ish. Dinner is usually my biggest meal.3
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Varies. Most common: 3 reasonably even meals, dinner maybe a little more (may be a small snack or two, or none). Lately, pretty common to either eat a very light lunch (half the calories of breakfast/dinner or less) or to have lunch and dinner pretty close to blend into each other, clock-time-wise.
Back in the before-times (pre-coronavirus), light breakfast before AM workout, then bigger lunch/dinner, was a common pattern, too.
None of that made any difference to weight management, over almost 5 years of calorie counting so far. It was all about timing things pleasantly around wake/sleep/workouts/etc., or pure preference.2 -
I usually don't eat breakfast. Lunch is about 40% of my calories and the remaining 60% is at dinner.1
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Depends on my workout schedule but never after seven as I hate sleeping with food in my stomach1
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It took some experimenting to figure out what’s easiest for me, but ended up with uSually a light breakfast, medium lunch, heaviest meal at 4 pm, light meal (or big snack) Around 8 pm. But it varies a lot. No rules, just habits.2
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thelastnightingale wrote: »Just curious. We all know the saying 'breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, dinner like a pauper', but what works for you in practice?
I've found my habits have totally changed over the two months I've been on this journey so far. I wouldn't say I breakfast like a king (or a queen!), but I do now always have breakfast, and it represents up to 33% of my calories for the day. It wasn't a conscious decision, but after gradually tweaking with my mealtimes/calories, I find it helps me manage my appetite and energy over the day better than when I used to only have black coffee and not eat anything.
I've also stopped saving calories for snacks and instead just added those calories to my three main meals.
I definitely split my calories over the day very differently to when I was just gaining weight. Back then, it was the opposite to the saying - I skipped breakfast, had lunch like a prince, and dinner like a king. The bulk of my calories definitely went on dinner, and I guess probably because I was so hungry by that point, I made some really bad choices.
So, what do you do?
Usually I skip breakfast (I'm just not hungry in the morning), then my calories are roughly divided as follows:
- 15-20% lunch
- 10-15% afternoon snack
- 65-75% dinner
I'll also add that I've been using MFP for almost two years, and losing weight gradually and consistently.
Timing and breakdown of calories throughout the day are simply a matter of personal preference, needs, and adherence. Provided you're on your indicated caloric deficit, that's all that matters for weight loss.
I agree with you that probably the reason why you were gaining weight with your previous habits was because you were eating more than you needed at night due to being too hungry. You have different preferences and needs compared to mine, and that's why one way works better for you, and another way works better for me.
Good luck!
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Pre-pandemic, I generally skipped breakfast and ate a mid morning snack then I ate a large lunch with an aim to have my major meal digested before I got to roller derby practice. Derby was two hours of exercise and afterward the goal was a small meal. More often than not, I went home from derby and ate EVERYTHING. xD
Since the pandemic when I'm working from home everything has gone off the rails. Time has no meaning and there are no meals. I've been logging calories just to make sure things don't get out of hand but in general I've been just... eating parts of a meal whenever. So I might get up and eat an apple then an hour later have a potato. And a couple hours after that, bake a chicken breast. It's oddly satisfying.3 -
I dont eat any earlier than about 8 hours after I wake up, and i eat about 50% of my daily calories between 1 and 3 hours before bed.1
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GummiMundi wrote: »I agree with you that probably the reason why you were gaining weight with your previous habits was because you were eating more than you needed at night due to being too hungry. You have different preferences and needs compared to mine, and that's why one way works better for you, and another way works better for me.
I didn't really have much of a choice with the stressful job, long hours and long commute. Now that I'm at home and able to largely stop for breaks whenever I want to, I thought it was interesting how the timing of my food has naturally completely shifted. I'm starting to question if I really wasn't hungry at breakfast time previously, or just too harassed/busy to stop and eat.
It's really interesting hearing how other people split their days - I also believe in 'calories in, calories out' for weight loss, but I think the way you split your calories has as impact on your energy levels and therefore to an extent, the choices you make and how likely you are to stick to your numbers. I'm still refining the detail, but I was really surprised by how my body has started to insist on a morning meal, when previously it was content to skip it. (Well, maybe it wasn't, and I've only just started listening!)2 -
I tend to have a light breakfast, a bigger lunch and my dinner is my main meal of the day. Sometimes lunch and dinner are roughly equal calorically but usually dinner is more.1
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Guess it depends on what you're trying to do. I need to recover in the morning. 25 to 30% calories for breakfast and then another 25 to 30% for lunch. It makes dinner a bit smaller but no problem. I'm also concerned about what kind of calories are eaten when....1
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I don't "allocate" cals/meal. I just keep count as I go which allows me the greatest freedom to just eat whatever I want during the day.
I maintain on about 1800 cals/day and don't usually have anything for breakfast, just black coffee (5 cals). My largest meal of the day tends to be lunch and I eat whatever's left in cals at dinner.
One "trick" that I use to avoid overeating is to set my cal goal at only 1500. So, when I hit 1500 all the extra food cals logged after that come up in the red and warns me to avoid eating too much more.
Another "trick" I use is to overcount or round up the cals consumed rather than use the "exact" amount of food weighed or measured, so that I'm actually eating fewer cals than those logged.
This usually works to keep me under 1800 but when it doesn't I just make up for it the following day. Been maintaining my wt at 155 +/- 5# doing this for the past 4 yrs.1 -
I tend to get super hungry later in the day. So I do about 50% for dinner, 20% for breakfast, 20% for lunch and then 10% for snacks.0
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Up until 8pm: 300-400 calories
8pm-3am: 2000-2500 calories depending on activity level1 -
Breakfast is black coffee and some days (if I ate too early the night before) a light snack.
Lunch is usually about 40% of my calories.
Dinner is the other 60%.
This works for me, since if I eat breakfast, I find I am hungrier though out the rest of the day. I have also found that if I eat dinner too early (before 5:30ish), I get hungry before bed, so I aim to have dinner after 6 when possible.0 -
My makeup is 10% morning-ish (not really breakfast, as I won't eat if I'm not hungry), 20% lunch, 10% snack, 50% dinner, then 10% "nightcap" before I go to bed.1
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thelastnightingale wrote: »Just curious. We all know the saying 'breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, dinner like a pauper', but what works for you in practice?
I've found my habits have totally changed over the two months I've been on this journey so far. I wouldn't say I breakfast like a king (or a queen!), but I do now always have breakfast, and it represents up to 33% of my calories for the day. It wasn't a conscious decision, but after gradually tweaking with my mealtimes/calories, I find it helps me manage my appetite and energy over the day better than when I used to only have black coffee and not eat anything.
I've also stopped saving calories for snacks and instead just added those calories to my three main meals.
I definitely split my calories over the day very differently to when I was just gaining weight. Back then, it was the opposite to the saying - I skipped breakfast, had lunch like a prince, and dinner like a king. The bulk of my calories definitely went on dinner, and I guess probably because I was so hungry by that point, I made some really bad choices.
So, what do you do?
My personal saying is "Easy is king." How I have split my calories has changed a lot over the last 2 years of weight loss and activity increase. I have never cared how I did it only that it would be easy to sustain.
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My meals are different during the weekday vs the weekend. During the week I eat 45 calories for breakfast and 200-320 calories for lunch. I have a snack around 3 and then a decent sized dinner with another snack before bed. I work in a hospital so I am running around all day so I don't think about being hungry but when I am at home I get bored and want to eat constantly. I have found that eating a bigger dinner helps that. The weekends are a bit different. I eat eggs for breakfast most mornings but it is a late breakfast so it normally holds me over until snack and dinner. I struggle on the weekends because the boredom sets in especially since we aren't allowed to go anywhere or do anything!0
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I don't have a standard split. I adapt my calories day to day. If I know my main meal will be large, I make the other two smaller. If I'm going out, I skip a meal. If I feel like having a higher calorie snack, I cut calories out of the meal I feel least hungry for. If I'm not hungry in the morning, I don't eat...etc. Generally, lunch is my largest meal and it takes up about 40% of my calories, but even that is negotiable.1
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300-400 calorie meals 5-6 times a day0
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I eat 1400-1600 a day during the week and 2500 on Saturday and Sunday.
During the week, I try to have my meals equal about 400 each and my snacks about 200. I do try to push breakfast and lunch off til later in the day so I don't feel famished for dinner. Sometimes I skip breakfast and eat allll the dinner.1 -
I only drink coffee for breakfast, smallish lunch, and high cal dinner, dinner time is when i want to pig out the most so that's when i save my cals, i can pretty much last the whole day without eating too much or feeling super hungry, i just love a big dinner.1
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