I keep to my three meals a day: breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Meanwhile, I am constantly seeing people munching away on dehydrated fruit bits, protein this or that, fiber supplemented cookies, etc, to the point they overlook proper meals.
Did I miss a memo?
Idk about other people, but I just built snacks into my schedule. Breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, dinner, dessert. I’ve been told that spreading out your food intake like that is better. It all still adds up to the same calories each day and I’ve been slowly but steadily losing weight, so it’s been working for me and I don’t feel hungry much.
I gave up snacking or grazing, don’t think it’s healthy.
But yeah I see people doing this too, though fewer than I used to.
I’ve worked hospitality for decades, where breaks are sporadic and the hours are long. I only started smoking tabs just to get a break. Smokers always get more breaks.
Just got by from grazing - steal a few chips from the pass, or eat some food from the (untouched) returned meal. Yes, I’ve also eaten off returned plates when I’ve been KP.
Aye, when I was growing up it was 4 square meals a day - brekkie, dinner, tea and supper
Once I moved out and started working in pubs that soon changed
Grazers have existed forever. No need for big meals when you just always eat lots of little things all day long.
I’m going to have to disagree with you.
Having a full stomach and a regular blood sugar level is what translates into satiety. If not, discomfort sets in. People on full IV nourishment report hunger and thirst. There has to be some reason behind it.
And I have to wonder if not allowing the digestion to run to its course before eating more won’t cause ill effects.
Different people have different metabolisms I guess. I’m a fat bastard despite eating relatively well, and I’ve got friends who eat so much shit so often and are twigs.
True. Every person is unique.
STFU, you don’t get to disagree how other people “feel” and maintain their food intake. You’re a schmuck.
Seriously, this is gross of OP to muse about how fatty fat fats are getting fat by snacking all day and not adhering to OP’s diet suggestions will just lead to them getting more fat.
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I was agreeing with you, damn.
Sorry, thought you were being sarcastic.
there’s really no “right” way to eat other than daily / weekly balances of carbs / fat / protein / vitamins / minerals / water.
3 square meals is more like a pre-osha workplace safety thing for people doing manual labor since the meals need to be packed into a neat little meal break so they can get back to work, but the calorie requirements are so extreme that they need to get packed in thiiic during that meal break. Basically if you were a self respecting foreman of an old timey construction site you made sure the workers were eating “three square meals a day” to make sure they’d be working at peak productivity.
if you’re not building a railroad or stonework or skyscraper or carrying a roof up a ladder then grazing or intermittent fasting are fine as long as you’re getting the right balance of micros and macros. and when it comes to weight loss, gain, and maintenance, different people have different relationships with food that are often managed better with one strategy vs another, in ways that vary a lot from person to person.
Intermittent fasting? Grazing?
Please elaborate.
Grazing is like snacking throughout the day or many smaller meals
Intermittent fasting is better explained here, but it comes down to “fasting for part(s)” of the day
Grazing sounds like a sure way to gain weight and fast. By not putting in on one sitting a full meal, capable of sustaining for a given amount of time, we’ll constantly adding to our mouth this and that. It makes harder to tally how much is eaten in one day.
And not eating between meals can not be considered intermitent fasting? We have a meal and abstain from eating until the next. It is quite intuitive, as far as I understand the notion.
You should read up on diabetes.
Big meals are probably the worst way to eat - the body stores all the extra calories as fat.
Quite the opposite of your supposition.
I have. I have a few relatives that either suffered or suffer of diabetes and besides watching what and how much they eat, every single one keeps a life as close to normal as possible.
Honestly it’s probably way closer to the true neolithic diet that humans evolved to eat than scheduled meals are. And you’re even describing the right things to eat that way, nuts, berries, a lil jerky. There’s a lot of cultural variance too but honestly what our comes down to is that humanity’s biggest strength that has allowed us to become as powerful as we are is our fundamental versatility.
Even just in terms of food: koalas can’t even recognize the leaves of the one plant they eat their entire lives if they’re not on a tree but humans can walk to the other side of the planet and look at a plant or animal and be like “wonder how I’m gonna cook that.” That is AMAZING and you’re saying you think that’s bound by a schedule? You think humans spent time on the migration path going “nah I’m gonna skip that berry cuz it’s not lunch yet!”
You made me smile with that line on the humans looking around and thinking in different ways to eat the landscape.
You are correct, our ancestors ate whenever and whatever they could but we are not our ancestors. We’ve developed and went above and beyond those constraints.
And this is not to deny your point. I can easily withstand an entire day with a single meal, like many others, but it is not pleasant. And it is very well understood how keeping a schedule for eating, properly, is benefitial.
I fast for 20 hours and eat in a 4 hour window every day. It looks and feels nothing like not eating between multiple meals per day.
Also, people who graze, in my anecdotal observations, are always the absolute thinnest, healthiest bastards I know. A nut here, a grape there, abs visible in their thirties? Motherfuckers. If I did that if be a thousand pounds in no time. But as the person you replied to said, we all respond differently to different strategies and stick to what works for us.
What you’re describing in closer to what muslim endure during Ramadan, which is fasting, by definition.
If you feel fine with such regimen, good, but how adequate for common practice can it be?
My own anecdotal observation tells me the “grazer” (not a word I enjoy using) tends to put on a lot of weight. That constant eating is putting unnecessary calories into the body, regardless they eating “healthy” snacks.
Your metabolism goes up when digesting. So snacking a little at a time keeps your metabolism high and keeps your blood sugar from spiking. Also it keeps you from gorging in larger meals than is necessary, because when you feel hungry, you overestimate how much you really need. Then after you overconsume, how do you feel? Lethargic and not ready to do as much.
I can only reply with sitting down and stopping to eat, instead of the opposite. Keeping a schedule. Avoid junk food.
I’m quoting my doctor here.
Unless there is a need for a special regime, it is what I have been advised for decades.
I tend to eat the way you do; 3 meals a day with limited snacking. I eat this way because it helps me manage my migraine issues and snacking too much will cause weight gain, which (for me) causes bad back and knee pain. I used to snack more when I had a very physically demanding job. I’m a healthy weight.
My partner naturally fasts between 9pm-12pm every day. He eats a good size lunch, big dinner, and a good amount of usually healthier snacks. It works for him, I could never eat that way because I wouldn’t be able to afford the migraine medication that would go with it, but he does not have that problem. He’s a healthy weight.
I have a couple of friends who are more 1 meal a day with healthy snacking throughout the rest of the day. They are healthy weights and it seems to work for them.
Everyone is different and if it works for someone, I say have at it!
I eat just like your partner! It’s hard for me to stomach breakfast, so I do two bigger meals at lunch and dinner and healthy snacks in between.
It’s so fascinating how different people are!
lol I’d go crazy eating the way two eat. It would be constant migraines all day every day. He doesn’t eat much by way of breakfast either for the same reason, his stomach gets upset. Once in a while, he suggests going out to breakfast on the weekend and I always jump at that chance lol
Folks are all kinds of different!
Hasn’t this been a thing for a long time? Personally I don’t eat more than one “proper” meal a day unless I’m being physically active.
I think it’s fine. I don’t like cooking that much and it’s less effort.
It’s about stopping and making a proper break from the whatever we might be doing. Stop to read a book, when at work, talk a bit with my family. Just stop to exist, I think.
We often overlook this when tinkering with our own lives. I work from home and I still take three meals, mostly for the comfort and peace. I have had trouble shedding the last couple stone of fat left on me though. I could never imagine getting rid of family dinner, but I could probably stand to skip a few lunches and just take a reading break instead.
I think it already did with the invention of the vending machine, at least the snacks are better today, people are replacing their chips and candy bars with what appear at least to be healthier options in a lot of cases, although who knows about those protein snacks, that is still ultra processed food
I eat a pizza or sandwich at noon and that’s it… I have horrible nutrition :(
dehydrated fruit bits, protein this or that, fiber supplemented cookies
You’re describing people who do sports at work during lunch. Are you sure it’s not restricted to this type of people? I have seen them for a very long time.
Mid morning, mid afternoon… I resembles pica or just boredom eating.
Pica is really something completely different. If they are eating food = not pica (and not even close).
I abused the word there. Pica, in my language, is often used colloquially to address someone that is constantly eating, not out of need but by impulse.
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There’s been a snack culture for a while in some places. For a while the generalized “healthy eating” suggestion was to snack throughout the day so you don’t consume 1,000 calories at once in a single meal before bed. Not sure if that’s really the case still, or what.
At least here in Finland, officials recommend a snack between breakfast and lunch, and between lunch and dinner. We also have an “evening-snack” which is like breakfast but eaten an hour or two before going to sleep. Some officials, mostly dental-related, do think snacking is bad for your teeth or something, but we Finns do use xylitol quite often so I don’t think that consern is too important. When it comes to snack, its often fruit, maybe coffee and a bun. But definitely not chips or candy bars
no
Yes, it lets the food companies sell you more.
Those darn farmers, making me addicted to food.
I’m not going to disagree with you on that remark. I pay attention to the supermarket shelves and it does seem a lot of snacks are taking room previously available to basic food items.
Protein bars, protein powders, granolas, dehydrated this and that, nut mixes, etc.
The real food is going. Somewhere. I can feed myself out of this, in a pinch, but I hardly consider it food.
Nuts and granola aren’t food to you?
Depends on the amount of sugar added to it.
This is really about fat shaming, isn’t it?
Your other comments give it away.
Grazing is not a fat person’s habit. It’s just different. As long as a person is getting the right mix of micro and macronutrients and meeting their caloric goals for the day, it shouldn’t matter.
No it is not but it was bound for the issue to be raised.
Why? What does grazing have to do with fat people?
Nothing. But what you raised was bound to become a concern to someone at some point in the conversation.
