Eat late or skip a meal?

  • Sometimes I'm extremely busy and find myself not having dinner till after 11pm. So if the only option is late night meal or no meal which do you choose? Why?
  • I choose late-night meal. I go by that HALT thing--never get too Hungry / Angry / Lonely / Tired--so I make sure never to skip a meal and set myself up to be ravenous later.
  • if i am truly hungry, i will eat....if i just want to eat because its "past dinnertime and i didnt eat" or whatever reason my mind says, than often i will skip the food and just go to bed...often i want to eat because i'm tired anyhow, so going to bed solves both those problems LOL...yeah i might be hungrier in the morning but it's never led me to morning binging or massively overeating
  • I'd skip the meal and go to bed
  • I'd eat but something lighter than I would eat if I were having it at 7pm. If I'm hungrier the next morning at breakfast I'll eat more to balance it out.
  • for me it would depend on how soon after I'm going to bed. sometimes I don't eat anything all day until 1 am - this happened recently after sight seeing on my vacation all day, all I'd eaten was half of a soft pretzel and whatever calorie that was was way burned off. I ate a 600 calorie meal at 1am a went to bed around 5. not the BEST thing to do mind you but that's what I usually do. The next morning I had a light breakfast with my extra calories - I usually skip breakfast. I still had 500 calories left over that I hadn't eaten from that day and that worked in my favor for a BBQ someone threw for us

    So yeah. sometimes if I know I'm doing something special the next day I will save all of those calories if I miss dinner. if its REALLY late I will eat something really small like cereal, with more milk than usual.
  • I skip. Food definitely acts like fuel for me, so eating at 11 pm = not falling asleep before 3 am at the least, no matter how tired I feel otherwise. But then, I've never had night-eating problems, feeling hungry has never prevented me from sleeping, and whether I eat or not, I'll still be ravenous for breakfast the next morning. So I guess I sort of have it easy. ^^
  • that depends on you and your diet. I'm a calorie counter. So I would eat either way, as I have a hard time falling asleep while my tummy is twisted. So it may not be a meal, but at least a healthy snack.

    If your calorie intake is below 1000 until you go home, I would suggest eating for sure. If you go too low you will only put yourself back by lack of nutrients and your body could revert into fat saving "starving" mode.
  • Depends on the day. If I'm HUNGRY I'll eat and make it mostly protein and low-volume. If I can live without it I'll just eat tomorrow.
  • I'd eat the meal. This is basically because I like to eat, if I'm being 100% honest with everyone, lol.

    But the other thing I might do is take a RTD protein shake with me, or a protein rich snack like dry roasted soy peas. Something I could eat on the go. I would just move my dinner calories to the snacks.