my sister and i are both doing WW and she splits the points between meals, whereas i will usually save them for dinner time. here's how it works for me daily...

my limit is 27 pts. i will usually eat 10 pts throughout the day b/c i'm never hungry and i always think, if i eat more than half of my pts now (which would be like, at 2 PM), i don't want to be screwed over for dinner and be starving and only have 3 pts. that's just an example and just picked random numbers.

i'll usually eat about 17 pts. for dinner. i never exceed my daily allowance.

my sister said she doesn't think it's good i eat all of that at once.

what do you think? it's always worked for me and i'm losing a little over a pound a week since i've started.

thanks for any input!

hi!
i have the same points allowance as you, and when i started i did it like you too. i naturally dont feel the need to eat during the day, so eat at night. but i found my weightloss was very slow. i was losing half-1 lb a week. so i decided to try and allocate points to meals and see if it helped.
i allocated 5 for breakfast, 7 for lunch, 10 for dinner and that left me with 5 points for snacks. and that week i lost 3.5 lbs.

so while there are no rules per say, theres no harm in giving it a go and see how you do. if it doesnt make a difference to your loss then you can go right back. also, i feel exactly like you. i was hoarding my points in case i got hungry, but i've realised, of course i was getting hungry, i had eaten nothing during the day!

well done on the loss so far! keep up the good work!

There is no wrong answer here. If you experiment, remember that a one week experiment doesn't tell you much, because you can't rule out coincidence. When I was following Weight Watcher's, I also experimented alot with different distributions of points and number of meals, and I thought at first that some did change my rate of weight loss, but it turned out to be only coincidental, because over weeks of documenting, I found that there was little difference as long as I was staying within points.

I don't doubt that many people do find a difference, so I'm not saying you shouldn't experiment, just give yourself at least 5 weeks or more on a pattern, before you begin to draw any conclusions.

thanks so much for your input! i will try it for a few weeks and see how it goes

I know that some people don't start counting their points in the morning...they start counting their points at 5pm. 24 hours is 24 hours right? So they start counting generally at dinner time, eat until they are satisfied, count it all like normal. Eat a snack at night and then finish off their allowed amount if points during the day the following day (until 5pm when they start again from 0).

There are no real rules as far as how much is allowed per meal but I have found in my own experience that it is better *for me* to split it up and not eat all my points at once.

I do it differently every day depending on how hungry I am at what time of day. Some days I wake up famished and some days I wake up nauseous. Part of this is learning to listen to your body and take the cues.

Personally I use more points for dinner, but not an astronomical amount (like 17). Breakfast for me is anywhere between 3-5, lunch is usually 5 or 6 and then dinner is about 8-10. In between I snack. I eat about every hour and a half to two hours.

If I'm not watching what I'm eating and am not hungry in the morning and can go until at least 2 in the afternoon before I eat.

When I eat small meals I become hungry more often.... meaning my metabolism is kicking in. Plus. I'm not overly hungry and over indulging at any point.

I tend to use more points for dinner, as well, and don't find that it impacts my losses one way or another.

I always like to save a few points for after supper because I don't like the feeling that I can't have something to eat if I'm hungry. And I usually eat more points at supper time then at breakfast or lunch (though often lunch is leftovers from supper the day before). I like to spread it out though. Now that I've gotten used to eating breakfast I find that I have to do it or I get lightheaded. They say you're supposed to try to eat something every 3 hours but I don't blame you for trying to save your points for the evening because that is when I like to eat the most too. I like the idea of tracking points starting at 5pm. You should try that. I would do it except I'm doing the plan online and it doesn't give me that flexibility, though I've often speculated about whether or not I should be able to delve into the next days points if I stay up past midnight.

I tend to use more points for dinner, too, but am trying to learn to spread them out more during the day. One thing you could try is to add more zero point veggies to your dinner so you are still feeling "full" without using as many points. You can add 1 cup of broccoli, green beans, or cauliflower to your dinner for zero points. Then you can use more points for other meals or snacks throughout the day.