I'm trying to lose weight so I've been hyper-critical of exercise and my food intake and so I've been thinking about how many meals I eat in a day.

I've found that due to work I can be very inactive for days on end, moving from my bed, to a chair, to my car, to my chair at work, back to my car, to my sofa....etc. etc.

I find that I probably could easily get by with at most 2 small meals the whole day and not be hungry.

Having gotten older I notice I don't need as much food as well.

If I actually ate 3 square meals a day, every day, I think I would be about 300 pounds.


My question:

How many meals do you eat in a day and what size of meals.

What do you think is the best intake for yourself based on your observations?

I generally eat all day, but very small amounts and relatively low calorie foods... for instance a light yogurt for breakfast w/ coffee and splenda, a small snack at about 10:30 like maybe a banana or a granola bar, then a light lunch (i.e. a little salad, etc), and then a snack at about 2:30-3:00 like maybe a protein bar, then the gym at about 6:30, and dinner at about 8:00. I also have a little second hand mini-fridge under the desk in the office where I keep diet cokes, water, carrots... and beer for late workin' nights or Friday afternoons! It's helpful to have fresh fruit or veggies... as they're filling and keep you out of the not eating trap or the breakroom snack machine (where I used to go!).

It's hard to eat right all the time, but I've found that if we wait for a "good" meal on Fridays or the weekends... it seems so much better to get those wings or whatever else. I used to just think that workin' out would get rid of it, and that runnin' etc would finish it... but as we get older, those microwave burritos for lunch stick around far longer!

I actually do think that the way we eat helps, and that eating late dinners and snacks all day helps keep the metabolism up. I also found that eating breakfast seemingly made me MORE hungry in the mornings, and helps to lose those last stubborn winter pounds. My wife and I used to eat earlier dinners, often only goin' to the gym 2-3 days/week... and it's amazing how fast your pants get tight. We had a hard time w/ finding what was quick, as our work schedules sometimes bog us down. I also notice that I don't rely on caffeine to stay motivated as much. Not to mention having stuff in the office is good for keepin' you out of the drive through or even Subway... which isn't as good for you as you might think.

Try cooking light magazine... or even weight watchers recipes. We don't really "count points" or anything, but if you cook out of those recipes, often you'll accidentally lose weight.

OH, OH... and my biggest observations about people with a couple extra lbs to lose (I've been there... no shame). I see people drinking COKES (i.e. sodas for the less "southern" folks). If you figure that a Coke has 150 calories that all come from sugar, that's about like putting a dozen heaping teaspoons of sugar into a cup of coffee. Who would do that? No one... switch to diet or "zero" products. I had a college buddy that lost about 10lbs by just switchin' to diet. Granted, he drank 3-4 cokes every day... but it helped.

Umm... and if you get sweet fixes, revert to weight watchers recipes too. if you like to cook... it makes for interesting ideas in that you have to think about how to make it taste good but keep the calories down.

Glad to see you're taking steps to improve your health! To begin with, I'm not a doctor or nutritionist so YMMV.

The first thing you should do is throw out any books or magazines that promise quick results or tell you not to eat X and only to eat Y. Very few people can stick to such a restricted diet for the rest of their life and as soon as you go off, chances are it'll all come back. Or you'll feel guilty every time you indulge in forbidden foods and that's no way to live!

How many meals do you eat in a day and what size of meals.
Generally it's best to eat 5-6 smaller meals a day. The reasoning behind this has to do with how your body processes the foods we eat. When you eat a meal, your body will turn carbohydrates into blood sugar. Your body regulates the blood sugar levels very tightly. In order for your body remove sugar from your bloodstream, it wants to store the sugar in the muscles as a form of energy called glycogen. (More on how that gets done in a second) There is however, a finite limit to how much glycogen your body can store in the muscles. The problem with this is finite limit is most people already have their glycogen tank filled up! Meaning, the body can't store anymore glycogen in the muscles. So your body has to find another way/place to store that sugar. In this case, the sugar is turned into fatty acids which is stored in fat cells around the body. So, basically it's stored as fat. But wait, it gets worse!!

As I said above, the body wants to remove sugar from the blood stream to stabilize blood sugar levels. The way this removal and transportation is actually done with insulin created by the pancreas. A high blood sugar level results in lots of insulin being produced. When lots of insulin is being produced, our body thinks that plenty of energy is available and that it should stop burning fat and start storing it. But wait, it gets worse!!

Eventually these insulin levels have to come back down. And normally they drop below where they should be. Feel tired after eating a big meal? That's because your insulin levels are too low. When insulin levels are too low, you feel tired and hungry and you crave....high sugar foods. And if you go grab that chocolate cake or Snickers bar, the cycle starts allll over again.

So, how do we break the cycle? Well, the best way to do this is to eat five or six smaller meals throughout the day. This will keep your blood sugar levels at a more stable level and you wont have the blood sugar "spikes" that occur when you have 3 larger meals and that cause your body to overreact as described above. You can also avoid, as aevans176 said, cokes. (I lived in the south for 7 years) Foods high in sugar is obviously bad so try and stick with a piece of chocolate cake instead of the super triple fudge brownie chocolate cake al a mode. Also, sometimes "low fat" or "no fat" foods will increase the level of sugar in order to make them taste better so read those labels!


What do you think is the best intake for yourself based on your observations?
Now, the next important part of the question is, "how much do I eat?" Obviously 5 or 6 big macs a day isn't going to do the trick. Here everyone is different so you'll have to experiment and possibly get your doctor involved. The best way I've found to determine my meal size is to base it off my Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) or your Resting Metabolic Rate (RBR). To keep it simple, we'll just say that BMR is how many calories your body burns just to stay alive...breathing, digesting, thinking etc. You can get a quick calculation of your BMR or RMR here. Now class, find your BMR and I'll show you how you can use that to lose weight. Your doctor can probably get you a more accurate number but I used the website and it works for me.

Now, it's not healthy to lose a lot of weight really fast. So we're going to shoot for 1 or 2 pounds per week. To keep things simple, let's say we want to lose 1 pound per week and 1 pound of fat ~= 3,500 calories.

Now, I'm 6'8, 210 pounds, age 24 (blue eyes, male, and have a job with a 401K ladies ....republicans need not apply ) Based on the BMR calculator, my BMR is 2,230 calories. That means if I sit on my butt all day I'll burn 2,230 calories a day or that I'll need to eat 2,230 calories to keep my current weight. In a week I'll burn 7 times that which is 15,610 calories.

So, for those of you following along at home, take your BMR and multiply it by 7.

Now, as I said, I want to lose a pound a week. So I'm going to take my total calories for the week and subtract one pound. That'd be 15,610 - 3,500 = 12,110. That gives me how many calories I'd have to eat per week if I wanted to lose one pound. Now let's divide that out by 7 days which gives us 1730 calories per day. Now since we're going to eat 5 meals a day, we'll divide that by 5 which gives us, 346 calories*. So each one of my 5 meals should be around 346 calories. Ideally I would separate these meals by about 3 hours. When I have to drop weight for racing season I'll follow this plan fairly strictly and I'll start to feel hungry about 30 minutes before my next meal. However, corporate America and our lives get in the way so it doesn't always work out so well. These are all just guidelines. Try to keep it around 3 hours and try to keep the meals around 350 (or whatever your number is) calories. In the end as long as you're at or below the total calories needed per week (12,110 in the example) you're good to go! Here's the same thing in a formula:





Now, of course everyone is different and things aren't always so nice and neat so you're going to have to see what you can tolerate in terms of the size of meals. I can barely handle 400 calories per meal so I jacked it up to 550 and just added an extra 30 minutes on the bike. If you exercise you can eat a power bar or whatever every 30 minutes to an hour while you exercise or just increase you calories per meal. You want to make this something you can live with an don't hate. After awhile you want even notice it. You'll have a pretty good idea of what calories are in foods and how much you can have per meal.


Final tips:

1. Drink water. The more the better. I shoot for half a gallon each day.
2. Exercise. It raises your metabolism, good for the heart etc etc etc.
3. What you eat is still important! 400 calories of french fries isn't as good as 400 calories of carrots. (though you should still lose the weight) I go by the 1/3rd rule. Look at the label of the food. Look at total calories per serving. Then look at calories from fat per serving. If the calories from fat is at or below one third of the total calories, you should be ok.
4. If you want to raise your BMR, lift weights. More muscle increases the BMR/RMR, it's like burning calories constantly for free!
5. The above program assumes you don't exercise (thus violating tip #2 ) so you'll have to figure in how many calories you burn from exercise and increase them in your meal or add another or do what you want.

Anyone feel free to send me a PM if you have questions!

Resources:
BMR/RMR calculator
blood sugar and weight loss
Article explain why BMR and RMR don't go far enough
A good calorie count page that also ranks food nutrition wise
Calories burned per exercise


*This is a low number! 346 calories is not a large meal but the reason for this is because I'm a little below a normal weight for my height because it's racing season and I just finshed a stage race this past weekend, so if your number is a lot higher don't worry!

How many meals do you eat in a day and what size of meals?

I usually only eat once or twice a day, with the "main meal" in the middle of my day. On one-meal days, I'll sometimes have a small snack a few hours before retiring - though some days, I skip eating altogether. On the other hand, I consume a massive amount of coffee and soda on a daily basis - at least two 16 oz. cups of coffee and three or four 12 oz. cans of (usually) Mountain Dew, Code Red, or Pepsi. I never - ever - drink water. Considering the fact that I rarely get more than four or five hours of sleep, it seems I have the lifestyle of a speed freak. I have slowed down a bit, however: for years, I'd often go without sleep at all for a day or two each week. Now, that only happens once or twice a month.

What do you think is the best intake for yourself based on your observations?

This seems to work for me. For most of my life, I was a few pounds light of my "ideal weight". For about five years (ending about two years ago), I started eating breakfast four or five times a week in addition to my other meal or two and gained about twenty pounds. It was the only time my weight changed in nearly forty years - and I still haven't lost it.

Great advice!!!!!!!!

I basically have to stay in decent enough shape to pass PT tests, etc.... but my wife and I have always had to fight the battle of the bulge. It's hard for weekend warriors especially, because we only get a reminder of what terrible shape we're in once/month. Then we go home and forget until the drill comes around...

I like thinking about it in terms of a week's worth of calories, but I wonder how the average joe can find their resting metabolic rate? The gym does it when you first join, etc, but it's not like Walgreens has a test in the corner!

I like to think about it like a bank account, where you make deposits and withdrawls... deposits being eating junk you don't need and exercise being the withdrawls. It's mostly common sense, and most people I know on "fad diets" have a hard time getting off the couch. (I have plenty of friends in this trap)

Consider that beer during Mavs games (ugh... we lost), Hooters at Lunch on Fridays, and/or Starbucks every now and again come at a high price. These are the days followed by (or preceeded by) long runs in the Texas heat, or maybe Saturday morning basketball with the guys. Funny enough, people always ask where my energy comes from. Working out just makes you feel better...

I sit in an office most of the day, and then when I get out of my office... I generally am going to another office where I sit on my rear-end. Many Americans fall into this trap. It's hard to work 9-10 hrs then go spend 60 minutes pounding the pavement or lifting weights, but as Americans are becoming increasingly obese, it's a necessary evil. My wife is an RN, and last they had an office pool to see who would lose the most weight before Christmas, and one lady did weight watchers coupled w/ aerobics and lost 72lbs. She looks like a different lady. Most of the ladies lost 10-15lbs, but it was still good for everyone. I think it's a good idea... most people undoubtedly have a few friends that could lose 15+lbs... all of y'all kick in $15-20 and winner takes all! It turned into a thing where other departments in the company were asking about it, keepin' up with who lost what, etc... Heck, I'd do it now, and I only have 5-7lbs that I could lose! (well, maybe 10 if I dug deep).

Usually two meals somewhere in the day, maybe fruit when available for a snack. We do a lot of black beans and wild rice for the blood pressure containment. Green chili and tortillas too. We've gone minimalistic on meat and dairy, and don't miss it much. Once in a while a bloody steak or cornish game hen, maybe an egg breakfast. We don't get stupid about it.

We do eat buffalo fairly often, maybe eight times a month. It's grown here locally and is all grass-fed. Buff goes into tacos and spahgetti sauce, from which I make super pizzas with a dusting of cheese. Olive oil galore.

Dang. Gettin hungry.

Too many people overemphasize what we eat and underemphasize physical activity (exercise!).

An exercise routine should be a part of everyone's life. As mentioned, an in shape body naturally burns more calories and the exercise itself keeps you slim and is essential to overall health.

My big beef with most diets is the lack of emphasis on exercise. 30 minutes of walking a day can burn 1/3 a pound a week. Doesn't sound like much, but that's an absolute minimum.

Exercise along with moderate cutbacks in calorie intake can have a big impact on most people's health.

How many meals do you eat in a day and what size of meals.

I eat about the same everyday. I eat a small breakfast (with 2-3 coffees over the course of the morning) a small lunch (half sandwich, chips, pop) and a larger dinner (usually). I often skip non-breakfast meals (2-3 times a week). I try not to eat before going to bed (2-3 hours before). I do consume beer more often than I should (even light beers are almost 100 calories each).

I exercise on an infrequent schedule, but try to get in something each day. I play basketball 2-3 times a week.

What do you think is the best intake for yourself based on your observations?

I have no idea, but I haven't gained any weight since college (over 10 years now) although my six pack abs are become closer to 12 pack abs . I should start running again, or buy an elliptical or something...