I was thinking the other day about how my eating habits differed from when I was thin. Every time I have dieted in the past, I tend to graze all day long to try and stave off hunger. Even though I’m on plan, I devote a huge amount of the day focused on food and eating. I always thought of how some people say you’re supposed to eat every couple of hours instead of just eating 3 meals and focused on that. However, when I fell off plan, I would still eat all day long like that because it was what I was used to. Thus I would gain back everything I had lost and often more.

Well, when I was thin I would not normally eat breakfast (this is not a habit I’m going to go back to, because I know the value of breakfast) and then I would eat lunch, sometimes a snack, dinner, and sometimes dessert. I didn’t eat all day long, healthy food or not, I rarely if ever had seconds, and I stopped eating when I was full. I’m not sure when things changed, but that is NOT the way that I have been eating for the past many years. I do know, though, that this realization has opened my eyes in a new way to my relationship with food. I think that in order to be successful and stay successful, I need to not have my whole day revolve around food. I don’t think it’s going to be easy to retrain myself, but I’m working at it.

So. How often do you eat in a day? Do you find you’re more successful if you allow yourself to eat when you want or stick to regimented mealtimes?

I am not successful if I'm grazing or eating 4 or 5 mini meals a day. The more I eat the more I want. So, I have three meals a day, with lunch being the most caloric. I do have a small afternoon snack that usually consist of an iced coffee and two pieces of Dove dark chocolate. Got to have my chocolate!

For me, I eat small meals or snacks every 2-3 hours or I end up binging.

Before changing my eating habits, I had one meal that lasted all day and night

I eat often, three meals and 2 or 3 snacks. I ate just as often when I was gaining weight, maybe more often.

Lets see..

Yesterday:

Morning-Egg whites, tomatoes and spinach
Noon-Egg whites, tomatoes and spinach
2:00-Arctic Zero ice cream with blueberries and 10 almonds
3:00-Kashi cereal with more blueberries and almond milk
5:00-apple
7:00-tuna with f-free m.whip, 1 flatbread, diced jicama
9:00-45 calorie bread, powdered peanut butter--1 teaspoon

I was home all day yesterday. There are days I eat less frequently. This worked okay for me yesterday

I also feel like all the mini-meals and snacks make me think about food *constantly.* Three meals really frees me up. However, I do usually have a midmorning snack because I almost always get hungry then, no matter what I have for breakfast. But it' not a major production, and I gave up on the constant mini-meals idea.

Usually it's:

Get up at 5
Breakfast about 7
Snack about 10:30
Lunch about 1
Dinner about 6:30 or so

Generally I eat fruit for breakfast, lunch, supper and a night time snack. That has been pretty consistant except for the breakfast part which I didn't eat before.

The difference is: fruit for breakfast instead of 2 (or more!!) pieces of toast slathered in peanut butter and...the biggest of all I think...my night time snack is also usually fruit and maybe some yogurt where as before it was usually chips or ice cream or something else ridiculously calorie laden.

I am sure there were days that I ate more calories just before bed than I eat all day now!! Yikes.

I eat breakfast, a morning snack (maybe), lunch, afternoon snack, dinner and some ice cream for dessert

I don't center eating around my day....it gets very busy here with 3 kids, DH traveling for work and running a business out of my home so I will graze on cherries, broccoli (these are usually my morning or afternoon snacks) or even my meals...a bite here and there when I remember.

I was chunky as a kid and was at a normal weight until I started having kids.

I do three meals and 3 snacks. snacks are like a banana or other piece of fruit (betw breakfast and lunch); an apple and V8 in the afternoon, and yogurt and glass of milk in the evening.

I personally think the body likes a pattern, my body has adjusted to eating at certain times, and I feel hungry before I eat a snack or meal. if I don't feel hungry, I'll wait a half hour or hour to eat a snack.

I eat meals with bf, so we stay pretty on time, though on gym afternoons we'll eat dinner an hour or so later.

I don't feel like my day revolves around food, though I eat fairly often. I felt that way much more when I was doing WW and JC (a while back, I know WW has changed quite a bit since I've done it) because of all the planning, shopping, preparing, and cooking involved -- even with buying prepackaged food from JC. I work out of my apartment now, and bf does a lot of the cooking and shopping, I should add.

Just checked my post-it that I'm carrying around and today's plan is eating 4 times. It can be anywhere from 3-6 times, but it's almost always either 4 or 5 times.

My dinner is almost always only one meal, but my "lunch" can be 1, 2, or 3 times of eating depending on how I've split up those calories (usually 2 or 3). My breakfast is either 1 or 2 times of eating (most often 1 time).

me:

breakfast: noon
lunch: 4
snack: 7
snack: 9
dinner 11
RARE a snack here: 1

I wouldn't say I feel like my day 'revolves' around food but I do feel like if I'm not mindful, I will just start eating and not stop!

I can sooooo relate to this!

I just started eating 7 small snacks/meals (200 calories each) a day every 90 minutes and I'm loving it....I get to eat all day long except this time it's in smaller portions.

My main issue was going all day without eating or too much time lapsing between meals...To resolve this I've started this plan and I use a timer to remind me to eat...I get very excited when it's time to eat again

I also forgot to add I've stopped eating after 8pm. However last night I did eat some watermelon.

I eat a million times a day! (or it seems that way).

Up at 6 am
Breakfast 7:30-8 am
Lunch 11:30 am
Snack 2:30 pm
Dinner 5-5:30 pm
Snack 7:30 to 8 pm
Bed 10-11 pm.

I eat 3 meals with snacks averaging me eating about every two hours. Or I get the tummy rumblies.

I usually do breakfast, then an optional snack, lunch, post workout snack, the dinner. I don't always snack between breakfast and lunch though.