Or to put it another way, are you one of those people who can skip breakfast, go to work on a black coffee, take lunch at about 2pm, and not collapse in a heap?
Or do you have to eat every three hours or so?
I ask because as I adjust from the eat-whatever-whenever ambience of university life, to the you-can-only-eat-at-1pm business world, my tummy is rumbling! Can you train yourself to a different eating pattern? I don’t want to get into the vending-machine habit - not very healthy. Otherwise I’m gonna have to start eating dinner at 4pm. :eek:
Personally, I’m finding one good meal per day quite adequate; this is part of a scheme to lose a couple more pounds. I eat a good, balanced, home-cooked meal (with dessert) at about 6 PM and that’s it; tea, coffee, water etc at any time, but no snacks or sweets (once I start nibbling, I can’t stop).
I can’t go more than a few hours without eating (apart from overnight, of course). And hunger, when it hits, is savage. I can go from mild tummy rumbling to I’m-gonna-pass-out within half an hour.
Maybe you could keep some fruit or yoghurt on hand just until your body adjusts to the new routine? Nuts might be even better.
I’ve never really paid attention to how long between meals I can go. I usually only eat when I’m hungry, and I’ll only eat something good and non-fat…like fresh veggies or some fresh fruit. I only cook on weekends anymore, because that’s the only time my husband is home. Other than that, my daughter and I just eat fruit and veggies, with an occasional pizza tossed into the mix at some point. 
Not very often, though! Darnit…
I’ve been told that if I go more than six hours or so without eating during the day, I tend to get crabby. BUT THE PEOPLE WHO SAY THAT ARE LYING, **** IT! IT’S NOT MY FAULT THEY’RE BEING IMPOSSIBLE! NOW GET THE **** OUT OF MY WAY! …ahem. Anyway, they might actually have a point. I also get light-headed and stoopid. So I need my three meals a day and an afternoon snack. If I eat a big, late breakfast, I can skip lunch, but then that snack gets a bit bigger and a lot earlier. No way I could skip breakfast.
In your case, I’d look into healthy snacks you can keep in your desk drawer. Nuts are good, or you can get in the habit of bringing in a cup of yogurt each morning, for instance.
It changes depending on my eating pattern. At the moment I’m just having two slices of toast at lunch time, and a meal in the evening. I feel fine. However, if I eat more for a few weeks then suddenly reduce the amount of food, I’ll feel hungry until I get used to it.
So basically, my body just needs time to adjust and I can eat a little or a lot and feel the same.
I’ve been eating four meals a day for the last month or so simply because I’ve been extremely hungry. So, I can’t really go more than four or five hours without getting the munchies. Course, I don’t eat at the same time everyday, and often don’t even eat anything til midday.
Once a day. Evening meal. Breakfast and lunch consists of coffee and sometimes a protein bar if I’ve had a particularly hard morning workout. Otherwise eating through the day gives me a full, uncomfortable feeling that I just don’t like. Business lunches (which I like to avoid as much as possibl) just give me food comas.
I’m not advocating this as an ideal and I come from a family that eats 3 meals a day as a rule. Breaking the habit was a slow and steady progression but I find it gives me the necessary caloric and nutritious intake my body needs to stay healthy and fit. I just make sure to take my vitamin suppliments (nothing exotic or weird) and have a healthy balanced meal at the end of the day.
I think it’s fair to mention that I subscribe to the more or less recent theory that people (in the western world) generally overeat and would do far better to maintain a minimalist volume diet. I hate to use the words “near starvation” but given the abundance of healthy food we have available to us, eating less doesn’t necessarily mean “starving” yourself. To be fair, I’m hardly a waif and putting on body fat has always been easy for me. Keeping it off is my lifetime’s challenge.
The short answer: I couldn’t be more regimented. I never skip meals and eat them close to the same time every day. I don’t snack.
I wake at 6:15. Around 8:00, I start getting hungry. I usually eat at 8:15. If I don’t eat by 8:30, I’m angry and agitated. I need to delay breakfast as much as I can because. . .
I start feeling hungry at about 11:15. I eat lunch at 11:30. If I KNOW I’m going to have to eat a later lunch, I can deal but I don’t like it.
I get home from work about 4:15. I usually exercise, in which case I’ll eat a banana or energy bar, unless I had a big lunch. If I’m not exercising, I need to eat, something like a few nuts or chips or maybe just a banana. And a martini.
Supper, I’m more chill time-wise. Anywhere from 6:30-8:00. I cook most every night, and once I start cooking I’m in no hurry. However, I still always know when and what I’ll be having for supper.
While I might be able to train myself to skip meals, that is something that’s currently impossible. I get hungry, agitated, can’t concentrate.
In other aspects of life, I’m not “regimented” at all. But, food wise, I’m a freakin’ marine. I hit the grocery store on Sunday or saturday. I go in with a partially formed plan of that week’s meals (through thursday at least) and flesh it out while I’m there with the food, seeing what looks good for fish and meat.
I only eat once a day, in the evening. I can’t do food in the morning, just a cup of tea. I don’t take lunch to work and there isn’t a restaurant for miles (and I don’t drive). So I eat when we get home at night. I’ve done it for years and I don’t seem to be suffering any ill effects. My wife says she doesn’t know how I do it.
At work I have to graze otherwise I’ll get really hungry, so I have breakfast at 7:30, then a little snack about 10:00, another at 11:30, a small lunch at 12:30 then another small lunch when I get home at 16:30. I have a full dinner around 18:00 then nothing until breakfast.
So the pattern seems to be if I have a large amount of food I can go a long time without any more, but if I don’t have that much I need to eat sooner. Who’d have thought it?
If your company doesn’t allow you to eat at your desk, you might still be able to slip a protein or meal replacement bar in mid-morning. Meal replacement shakes are also a good possibility as are the aforementioned nuts.
I always eat breakfast and dinner and sometimes eat lunch. My company is lax enough that when I go in (I telecommute 9 days out of 10), I can eat both breakfast and lunch at my desk without anyone raising an eyebrow.
My stomach hurts when it’s empty; it gets so acid-y that sometimes it makes me sneeze! I almost never skip meals. I can go 6 hours if I had a good meal prior to that. A typical day for me is up at 5, coffee, eat breakfast at 7:30, lunch around noon, and dinner at six.
I guess my eating habits are kind of strange. When I get up, I prefer a cup of coffee, but can do without - sometimes I just have water. I pack a lunch - some kind of breakfast cereal, some kind of chips/crackers, pickles/olives, salami (usually), and cookies. When I get to work around 8:00, I start “grazing”. I drink two bottles of iced tea and munch on what I brought in my sack lunch all morning long into early afternoon. When I get to my pickles and salami I usually have a soda. I usually only have one a day though - I feel oogy about the calories. When I get home, I usually don’t eat anything. On the weekends, it’s one big meal. That’s it. I don’t know - I suppose this is a “bad thing”.
I have coffee and a granola bar around 9:00 when I’ve gotten settled in at work. Sometimes I also have yogurt. Around 12 I eat lunch which is usually a peanut butter sandwich, or a salad if I go out. Then around 3 I start to feel like I need a snack. Sometimes I can just forge on without it, but other times I get a candy bar or something sinful from the vending machine. I try to limit this to one or two times a week.
I like to eat dinner around 6-7. Sometimes it’s just a bowl of cereal, other times I make a meal. It depends on whether or not my kiddo is home. Then I have to eat an evening snack, which is usually ice cream or something else yummy.
It really is a wonder that I’m not overweight. I guess it’s because I work out quite a bit.
Left to my own devices I would be a grazer…eating a few olives here, a handful of nuts there. But life doesn’t work like that, so I eat 1 meal a day when I’m off work and 2 meals a day when I’m working. I don’t snack or drink lots of fluids between meals.
However…if I’m doing something strenuous or have forgotten to eat lunch on a day when I work I will become hypoglycaemic. Properly shaky, dizzy, incoherent hypoglycaemic, not “hungry and irritable” that most people mean when they say that. For that reason I usually have a bar of chocolate in my pocket or backpack.
My ancestors were obviously not designed to cope with famine, everyone on my mother’s side of the family is the same, we have metabolisms that mean that although we can put on weight easily, we also lose it easily as well. Meaning that a week of feeling slightly under the weather or stressed can mean I’ve lost 10lbs without trying (not a good thing, I don’t have 10lbs to spare). On the up-side, I’m not likely to develop diabetes…
Coffee around 9am, every day (except weekends, when I wouldn’t be caught dead awake at that hour). Usually, I eat lunch between 12-1pm. Any later than that, I get very cranky. Dinner is usually depending on what I’m doing that night, so anywhere from 6:30p - 9p. If I eat early, I’ll grab a snack before bed.
If I eat a really big meal, I can go about seven hours before I’m hungry again. I hate to eat big meals, though, so I usually have smaller ones every 3-4 hours. I also find that I’m happier if I do the bulk of my eating early, and if I eat protein.
So, breakfast around 10, lunch around 12, snack 4, dinner 7, snack 10. I usually don’t want the 10:00 snack, but if I don’t eat it I will be too hungry to sleep when I go to bed (around midnight or 1). Plain yogurt is my favorite snack, btw, seconded by those 100-calorie bags of microwave popcorn. Thirded by fruit and a glass of milk.
I always have a slice of wheat toast with peanut butter, for breakfast. Typical lunches for me are: hard boiled eggs on a slice of toast, or a tin of sardines on a slice of toast, or whole-wheat pasta with a small tin of tuna–and maybe a piece of fruit. Typical dinners for me are a bowl of vegetable soup with some bread, a cup of vegetable soup with a 4oz American Heart Association steak, or a piece of baked chicken with whatever I decided to bake with it.
Well, Monday I ate dinner at 9 pm (popcorn and prunes, I really need to go grocery shopping) and didn’t eat lunch until 3 pm on Tues. So that’s eighteen hours. I was getting pretty hungry at that point but not weirdly hypoglycemic or anything.
I usually have to eat every 3 or 4 hours.
I tend to eat nutritiously and am fairly skinny, though chocolate is not a stranger to my lips.
I can go without a meal, especially if I am busy with work or chores, but sooner or later I can be faced with something along the lines of the hypoglycemia that irishgirl mentioned: not incoherent, but definitely worse off than just hungry and irritable:the shakes, the fainting feeling.