I'm sticking with my answer. Tightly. And grazing wrecks havoc with blood sugar levels anyway. Good solid meals should keep you going for a good 5/6 hours.
Anyway - it's all just comments - nothing serious.
Ray
I'll stick with my answer too! I lost 70 lbs and have kept it off for 3 years while eating 6-7 times a day. I do grocery shop a lot. When I was fat, I spent a lot of time miserable and dreaming about losing weight. I'd much rather be shopping for baby carrots wearing my size 6 jeans than crying in my bed under the covers
I think it depends completely on the indvidual. I HATE being hungry, I make really bad food decisions, I eat too quickly and too much. I am so much happier if I have a snack! If someone is fully and happy on 3 meals a day, I would definitely tell them to keep doing what works for them!
Another snacker here. 6 small meals every day. Some are really more like snacks, but none of my meals are over 350 cals (unless I am eating out and plan for it). This has honestly been a new strategy that has really worked for me. Keeping myself from getting too hungry has eliminated all of my binge behavior. I thought that I ate ravenously when I got home from work because I was an emotional eater. Not true. Skipping breakfast and often lunch too made me a binge eater.
I can't believe the difference this one change has made in my whole rate of success
Another frequent eater. I have 5-6 meals and snacks a day-- typically something like:
8a: 1/2 c rolled oats and 1 c blueberries w/2 tablespoons ground flaxseed
10a: 1 Babybel cheese
Noon: 2 tablespoons PB on a whole wheat pita and an apple
2p: carrots, broccoli and hummus
4p: fat free yogurt and cottage cheese
7p: 4 oz chicken breast with garlic and a hint of pesto on wilted spinach
8p: 1 Dove Dark square
I think the best way to eat is the way that works for you. If you need to "train" yourself to eat 3 meals a day, well, go for it!-- but all that ever trained me for was eating everything I could find in the cupboards the second I walked in the door from work. I'd mindlessly toss back 400-500 calories while I cooked a 400-500 calorie dinner...
I'm sticking with my answer. Tightly. And grazing wrecks havoc with blood sugar levels anyway. Good solid meals should keep you going for a good 5/6 hours.
Anyway - it's all just comments - nothing serious.
Ray
I would be interested in references if you have them (serious ones please). The is the opposite of what I learned in grad school nutrition and the opposite of what the nutritionists and dieticians I work with say.
I think that for weight loss, one should do what works for them....so if three meals works for you, great. But lots of people read this site and I would not want them to have an opinion misconstrued as a fact.
So it kind of is serious if you have someone who is here learning about nutrition, and they accept this statement as fact that applies across the board.
Yes it's whatever works right? and frequent meals is what got me into trouble in the first place, and many others I know.
Grazing reinforces a lack of impulse control, which is a problem for people with low serotonin and for those who are sugar sensitive and those who are sugar sensitive and don't know it. Eating 3 meals a day and a snack (if necessary) gets you to pay attention to what food really feels like in your body. You teach yourself to stop and start, not one big "well when can I eat again" and all the calculations that ensue....it's mind boggling.
There is just as much solid research in favour of 3 meals as there is in 5 or 6. Again it's up to the individual to make that choice.
Ray xo
Not if the choices are planned and healthy.
Perhaps we are focusing on different definitions. Planned small frequent snacks/meals can reinforce impulse control and maintain blood sugar levels. We are not talking about grazing on cookies here.
I am going to stick very firmly to- whatever works for your individual body chemistry and emotional mindset! For me- just call me Snackerella, because I will often eat 6-8 small meals/snacks a day. Sometimes I eat lightly during the day if I'm busy, and have a larger dinner. BUT- that is ME! I LOVE to eat! It is fun for me to anticipate my snacks as treats throughout the day. When I hit 1400 calories, I'm done for that day. Period. Other people would 1) never feell full, or 2) feel like they were obsessing about food too much, or 3) hate to have to count every calorie. Trial and error, baby, because every one of us is a unique and special, highy complex fat-burnin', beautiful biological machine!
Thanks for the leads, although commercial books were not quite what I was after. There might be a bias in what they are selling. I'll actually look into some literature as well when I get a chance to see if we need to update our guidelines.
I think the cultural construct of how often we eat is fascinating. And it has direct applications to not only weight loss, but other things as well.
What is normal for humans as mammmals? In some cultures, breastfed infants nurse several times an hour. This can surprise parents who expect their babies to eat every 4 hours (a la formula fed infants). How biology and culture often conflict in how often and why we eat is interesting.
Anyway, this is another time for a good reminder to not take posts as medical advice.
I think whatever makes you feel satisfied is best! I happen to like to eat all the time. It feels luxuriously satisfying to me. I do best on the days I work. I pack up my lunch bag with small portions of lots of different healthy foods and eat away. Like lots of folks say on here, however you do it, planning is key.
Average total: 1275 cals
Grams of carbs: around 150 g
There is no way that eating like this that I am spiking my blood sugar. I'm familiar with both Sugar Busters and Sugar Blues, so I avoid refined sugar, high fructose corn syrup, and so on.
I consume three meals and four snacks in order to prevent "grazing" (using the pejorative meaning for eating out of control). I'm never more than a few hours away from a meal or snack, so find it easy to Just Say NO when confronted with an unexpected food opportunity.
I eat 6-7 meals a day, buy I lost weight via a combination of whole foods + calorie counting and I avoid white flour, packaged baked goods - most foods that would be considered "high glycemic." I understand that I do have sugar sensitivity - so I eat a lot of frequent meals and I don't eat a lot of foods that spike my "sugar cravings." A snack for me is fruit or a bag of cut up veggies (today, my 3 snacks are: bing cherries for mid morning, a tangelo for the afternoon and a bag of cut up veggies - baby carrots, celery, grape tomatoes and red pepper strips for around 5:30). We might have different interpretations of SNACKS. I'm not eating Cheezits or a bagel for my snacks!
Throughout my weight loss, I've eaten 5-7 meals and snacks each day. I agree that everyone needs to find their own way, but I think this type of plan has worked well for many people here. To say one way is RIGHT and the rest of us are all somehow misled, even if successful, seems awfully rigid.
Of course, the definition of "snack" is key. For me, it's just a smaller portion and/or easier preparation of the healthy food I would normally eat. If your snacks OR your 3 main meals are junk, loaded with HFCS, trans fats, saturated fats, white starchy food, etc., you may have problems!
Here are a couple of reasons for my approach:
>I exercise 5-6 times a week. I can't challenge myself with activity when I'm either too full or too hungry. Eating small meals/snacks before and after keeps me energized.
>My diet is more well-rounded when there's room for variety. Six choices of fruits, veggies, proteins, whole grains, and healthy fats leaves me more satisfied at the end of the day.
>And of course, as others have mentioned, when I've eaten more recently I don't approach mealtimes ravenously. I can slow down, make good choices, and savor them.
Sorry, I didn't mean to spin everyone up like this.
To clarify, by "grazing" I meant having 2 light meals and 1 normal meal and 2-3 pre-measured, whole-food, low-cal snacks throughout the day. I do not drink pop (not even diet pop), coffee, tea, etc. and I generally am able to avoid processed foods (I occasionally will eat canned vegetables). I don't often go out to dinner, and I don't eat things that come in shiny wrappers or out of vending machines. If I didn't cook it, I generally won't eat it (partly just because I don't know how many WW points it contains! ). I don't eat enriched flour, I try to avoid HFCS, and I cook mostly with olive oil. I get plenty of calories using mostly whole foods.
My typical daily diet:
Breakfast (7:30AM): 2 boiled eggs (whole)
Snack (10AM): banana/apple
Lunch (noon): spinach salad with cherry tomatoes, mushrooms, some kind of beans usually, a teeny bit of cheese, ... other 0 point veggies, and fat-free italian dressing....
Snack (2PM): grapes/strawberries
Snack (4PM): raw peppers/raw sugar peas/etc.
Dinner (6PM): grilled chicken breast, steamed veggies, maybe some kind of potato something....
After Dinner treat (8PM): something 2pts or less that is sweet.
So, the "snacks" that I'm talking about are always either 0 or 1 WW point, and are usually of the raw fruit/veggie variety.
That being said, my mom is diabetic. She has to check her blood sugar twice a day. In the morning, right before breakfast, she checks it. At that point, it is low, because she's been sleeping all night and it's been several hours since her last meal. After breakfast, her sugar comes back up. I would assume, therefore, that before lunch, since it's been a few hours since breakfast, that her sugar would have come back down.... so if you plotted her sugar level over the course of a day, it would create a sine curve, with the crests of the curve being near the time of day when she ate.
I don't know, but I've been told that metabolism works similarly. A while back I had some trouble, and the doctors kept telling me that by not eating, I was actually slowing down my metabolism. Even more specifically, we've probably all been encouraged to eat breakfast because it "jumpstarts your metabolism" for the day.
Obviously, there is a large amount of subjectivity to this topic, and everyone should find the solution that works for them.
I eat constantly too. But I think it's because i split up my meals... A pear first, couple hrs later some yogurt, then lunch, then LC cheese and wasa cracker, then dinner, then a 1 -3 point snack.... thats my basic meal cycle. It works for me. I try to drinks LOTS of water, and I feel like I am actually hungry when I eat... not just eating out of boredom like I usually do at work.
Three meals - four snacks
). I don't eat enriched flour, I try to avoid HFCS, and I cook mostly with olive oil. I get plenty of calories using mostly whole foods.
