Do you HAVE to eat 5 meals a day? If I stay within my calorie range can I eat 7 or 8?

[miss_jupiter76]

Originally Posted by Espi

LMAO at all of you being addicted to Oreos.

To OP , no you don't *have* to eat 'only' 5 meals a day .. if you can hit your calorie target better when eating more often, so do it..

Well that's a relief (!) because on sparkpeople I have plugged in besides breakfast lunch and dinner: mid morning snack, afternoon snack, evening snack, pre-workout snack, post-workout snack, late night snack (yeah just added that one yesterday to account for anything I eat after 11 pm on nights like these when I don't sleep until 2 or 3 am). I don't use them all everyday but as I'm starting to pay attention to my body and why and when I eat I've noticed that I am not always a hungry person in the morning but I have a hard time going to bed without eating something. In fact I did I wouldn't eat half of what I do since 50% of my calories come in the evening b/c thats when i workout.

As for me, I just never could lose weight when I tried to eat 5-6 meals a day as I'd get hungry during or even *after* a meal & not before! So, less meals work better for me to lose weight..

yeah one meal a day worked for me for a while probably because your body has all day to digest it? can't do that anymore though, i'm a natural snacker, i don't think i even really eat meals lol. maybe because you're thinking of it as meals rather than snacks? if i think 6 meals a day, my mind starts putting snacks between those meals too lol. but if you found what works and you're not hungry in between than thats great too.

There are of course exceptions to this rule & some people do better with more meals.. my guess is that these are the ones that get hypoglycemic easily & start getting all shaky when they don't eat frequently enough.

as a matter of fact i tried checking my blood sugar today but the testing strips are all old so much for that. Mine can go pretty low and i'm really curious to know what it is at least once a week since my carbs/sugars have gone down a lot since i started this program.

Those whose blood sugar levels tend to run on the high side do better with less meals. There's also a hormone called cholecystekine (sp?) or CCK which tends to not work very well for obese folks.. they don't release as much of it as leaner people do & CCK is basically the satiety hormone that tells you to stop eating.. also stretchability of the stomach is another factor.. maybe lean folks have very tiny stomachs & just literally can't eat more than a few bites at the time.. just like people who had their stomachs stapled or even totally bypassed...

lol i know some lean people who probably eat 3000 calories a day do you ever wonder where all that goes when they have such a flat stomach? i eat anything and my stomach expands right away.

FWIW, the only time I really felt good about eating 12 times a day or even more frequently was when I was cycling all day long & frankly that wasn't eating.. just chugging liquid foods. Interestingly w/o me forcing down that liquid I'd sooner just starve myself & have done so in the past = not eat while covering ginormous distances ... being in ketosis will shut down appetite almost completely .

No its good you ate/drank. You just reminded me maybe I should look into getting some of those strips that check acetone levels...i doubt it will show up when i'm still getting 80-120 carbs a day but maybe...its funny i posted this thread when i was hungry more than i am now, so i guess snacking all day is better for me.

I'm glad you found a sport that you really love, you've had some amazing rides. i kinda would love to ride a bike but believe it or not, it is possible to forget how to ride because I did lol.