Question about meal times and main meal of the day

In My Humble Opinion
1

What time do Dopers eat their meals?
(Feel free to include information about what said meals consist of, also snacks, if you are so inclined).

Which is your main meal of the day?

Whoever wants can post their location - I won’t because I’m paranoid! :eek:

So, I “break my fast” between 06:30- 07:30 with my morning coffee where I often (but not always) dunk 3-4 Digestive biscuits.

I get to work around 10:00 and have something like a cheese roll or spinach pie. When I’m at home on the weekend I usually have boiled or scrambled eggs with a bread product and grapefruit juice. Starting tomorrow I am going to try to make a serious effort to have an actual breakfast at home, hopefully before 08:30.

Midday meal is usually between 14:00 - 15:00, and it’s either something I brought from home or something from the company cafeteria (mediocre at best but affordable) , or a nearby cafe/ restaurant (great food but expensive- ish) or, less often, I order out .
The meal itself might be a salad, a sandwich or a proper meal (hopefully I resist the lure of carbs and get a meat + veg/ side salad combination).
I would say that is my main meal of the day.

I don’t have a fixed time for my evening meal because it depends on what I had at midday: If I have a salad, I’ll probably be hungry around 19:00. If I have something heavier I might not get hungry till much later when it isn’t ideal to have a really heavy meal. Last night for instance, I had a yogurt around 20:30 (trying to make this a daily habit) and got peckish again around 22:30 so I had (or should I say I limited myself to) 2 crackers and cheese.

What does everybody else do?

2

I basically eat two meals a day most of the time. I have something around 1PM give or take an hour. At about 7 PM I have another meal. Both are much the same thing; a huge pile of mixed vegetables and a protein.

Today I had some BBQ pulled pork and vegetables for lunch. I had more vegetables and lamb rogan josh for dinner. I mostly avoid rice, pasta, noodles and bread but have them now and then.

About once a week or so I’m hungry when I get up so i have some breakfast. Usually just a protein shake or a cup of soup - usually something spicy like laksa or Thai red curry.

3

My breakfasts - during the week - consist of two cups of coffee, as I can’t stomach an early meal. I’ll have an early lunch around 11:30am, then eat dinner around 7pm. Lunch and dinner are both ‘full’ meals. I might snack in between lunch and dinner, which would be something quite light.

At the weekend I’ll usually have three meals; a cooked breakfast, a light lunch (sandwich) and a ‘full’, cooked dinner. When I’m at home I’ll cook for myself 95% of the time, unless on a social engagement. At work I’ll eat in the cafeteria (mostly curries) or eat out (often a Subway), 80% of the time, unless I want to eat more healthily for a while.

I tend to eat a lot of fish and rice, but enjoy a decent steak with baked potato and vegetables at least once a week.

4

Some of us have a bit more unorthodox work times. I wake up at 01:35 and eat breakfast 01:45 which is usually bread and yogurt, maybe a fruit or some muesli as well.

Then work and more sleep, wake up again around 15:00 and drink a cup of tea with milk and honey and a cookie. Only warm meal of the day is usually around 17:00. I tend to either eat processed food or something simple I made on my wok. Since I live alone making something often means eating the same stuff for 2-4 days.

In the afternoon I eat bread or fruit or muesli and probably drink another cup or two of tea at some point whenever I feel like it. If I skip the late evening nap, I usually try not to eat anything after 23:00 since after that I can just wait for my breakfast.

5

I care for and live with my mom and we usually have breakfast anywhere from 8-10am. I like to bake so I usually make some kind of fruit bread like Blueberry or strawberry (depends what’s in season). Or, I may make them into muffins instead.

We usually skip lunch and have a VERY early dinner around 4-5pm. This could really be anything. Last night mom wanted a grilled cheese and tomato sandwich, since we had just picked a beautiful tomato from our garden.

Later in the evening, around 10pm, she always has a bowl of ice cream.

I do make sure that she has lots of salads and fresh fruits (she loves watermelon and peaches).

6

I need to front-load calories. I usually have an 8:30 breakfast (eggs with toast, tomatoes, or oatmeal) and, if I’m left to my own devices, lunch at about 10:30. Then I’m good to go until about 6:00, when I eat dinner.

Dinner is probably the largest meal of the day, though the two earlier ones are so close that you could sort of combine them, and they’d be larger than dinner.

7

Same ol’, same ol’ breakfast (big bowl of rice krispies) at 8AM, big meal (dinner/supper) at 2-ish, nothing after 6PM or I will be GERDing all night.

8

Breakfast, in the sense of the first meal of the day, if I eat anything more than a few crackers or a piece of bread will be shortly after waking up. Lunch could be anytime during the day, but usually between 12 and 1PM because it’s more convenient to take lunch when the rest of the world does. Dinner is usually late, 6:30PM up to maybe 10PM. I’m not stuck to a schedule though, I’ll eat anytime I’m hungry enough.

Now for some people dinner is served at lunchtime, don’t want to head down that road.

9

6 am breakfast is toast, coffee, and medications.

Mid-morning snack (on work days) is around 9:30 am, usually fruit and yogurt.

Lunch is normally around noon. Either a salad, sandwich, or something more substantial if I’m hungrier than usual.

Afternoon snack is more fruit, or some baby carrots.

Dinner is…well, flexible. Around 7 is best. It varies wildly based on what I want and what I had for lunch.

Bedtime snack is frozen yogurt. I make my own so I can control what goes into it. Made some really great frozen Greek yogurt with fresh peaches.

10

I work basically 2pm to 8pm but maintain a normal sleep schedule (11:30pm to 8am). I do my main meal around noon and usually just have something light when I get home. Its what my family always called a Farmers Schedule. For me it gives me more energy and has still allowed me to drop some weight over eating my bigger meal at night after I get home.

11

I’m mostly a two major meals a day person. I can’t eat soon after I wake and I’m not a morning person. There’s no way I am waking up earlier just to eat. Either of the two meals can be the major one depending on what’s going on in a given day. The evening meal can vary from right away when I get home to a couple hours later. I do tend to snack shortly before bedtime (frequently just a late second helping if dinner is later that day.) That snack help me get enough calories in my day since breakfast is out. It also keeps the length of fast till lunch the next day shorter.

I really don’t have much rigidity in my meal schedules. Semper Gumby.

12

My morning starts at 0700 with roughly 50 calories of supplements which include fiber and 2 grams of fish oils. Not food, exactly, but every calorie counts.

Around 1200, same thing - no food, yet, but another 50 calories in supplements.

That usually sees me though until about 1300, at which point I’m either just slightly peckish and have an ounce of baby carrots and a slice of cheese, or ravenous, and I buy half of McDonalds. More often the former than the latter, but I have not been able to figure out any pattern to it to avoid the latter potential.

Dinner is around 1800, and my husband is the primary cook. He tends to cook very heavy on meat and starch and fat/cheese/oily sauces. I have yet to successfully convince him that corn is a starch, not a vegetable, so often we have a main dish of something starchy with a starch drenched in butter on the side. I’ll often microwave myself an additional vegetable or get a salad to cut down how much of what he’s made I eat.

Around 2000, I’m hungry again, and tend to grab something sweet. A slice of bread with Nutella, a bowl of cereal and milk, ice cream if we have it. This is the snack I beat myself up over.

2230 or so is when I’m getting ready for bed, and take my last round of supplements for the day, for the final 50 calories or so.

I’m fat. Obese, actually. I dropped a bunch of weight when I stopped eating breakfast, but when my doctor put me on fiber/fish oil three times a day, the weight came back. My body just does not like me to eat that early (or maybe it likes it too much!), but I can’t figure out another practical way to get my supplements in three times a day. Moving my lunch earlier or eating a more substantial lunch does not help me avoid overeating later in the day. In fact, the days I eat a big lunch, I often come home hungry and snack before dinner. :confused:

13

Work schedule and thus meal schedule varies.

The days that are closest to traditional … up at 5:30 and exercise then breakfast (unless exercise is going to be the biking to and from work, half an hour booking it each way) - often nonfat Greek yogurt mixed with chia seed, hemp seed, All Bran Buds, some GoLean cereal, with some dried cherries and nonfat plain kefir to dilute. And coffee of course. Then snack on unsalted almonds sometimes with some other dried fruit mixed fruit added during the day. More coffee. (It’s a problem. :)) And dinner when I get home and, since I am the one who enjoys cooking, make it, usually by 7:30. My wife rarely gets home before then. A few time a week with a beer or a glass of wine.

Some days are later starts so nothing other than coffee until I am ready to go to work, so by 11. Then the almond snacking if hungry to tide me over until getting home and my wife has ordered in for us to eat round 8:30.

I’d prefer a late lunch to be my main meal with small snacks otherwise but life is full of compromises. Even though my 14 year old (who will soon be back to being the only child in the house) never eats much of what I make having a time we all sit together for dinner, as late as it may get, is important to us.

14

Breakfast is when I get up at 7-8, usually Burger King or McDonalds, or else a microwavable breakfast sandwich.

Lunch and sometimes second is a microwavable frozen dinner, between 12 and 2. Sometime lunch meat sandwiches or snack type stuff.

Generally I eat supper at 7-8, usually Taco Bell, Subway, or Arbys. Or else a frozen TV dinner or share a frozen pizza with my sister or or she might cook Chili or lasagne or something once or twice a week. We generally have pizza or Chinese once or twice a week too.

15

Breakfast - usually about 9 am and most often it’s a toasted English muffin and a piece of fruit. I’m not an early morning eater, so I wait until I’ve been at work for an hour or two.

Lunch - 1 pm - eaten at my desk, usually, and is either leftovers, or soup and salad.

Dinner - No particular time, whenever I get home in the evening. I eat a lot of stir fry or a saute of some type. Since it can be 10 or 11 pm when I get home, sometimes it’s only a protein shake.

16

During the week, breakfast is a small bowl of cereal (usually Cheerios, Corn Flakes, or Life) with whole milk, and a half-glass of orange juice, at 6 AM. Lunch is a single frozen burrito with sriracha sauce followed by 1 orange and 1 grapefruit. Snacks throughout the day are about 8 saltine crackers. Dinner is whatever my wife and I cook (often a stew with meat, veggies, and rice), or if we’re tired, we order (often Chinese food).

On the weekend I tend to have two larger meals – one at about 11 AM, and one at about 6 PM.

17

During the week breakfast is about 7:15 with either waffles, a croissant, a Jimmy Dean breakfast sandwich (muffin) or Red Baron Breakfast Pizza, which is back in our store hurrah!

Lunch is a sandwich I fix myself and bring. I eat about 12. One day a week we have a meeting which includes lunch.
Dinner is about 7 when I get home and is the big meal.

I usually eat leftovers for lunch on weekends, or a BLT when my garden is producing tomatoes.

When I retire we might switch to big meal at lunch. When I lived in Africa we did this because we had a servant/cook, who left before dinner time. Works quite well.

18

I usually only eat breakfast on days when I work out (run) in the morning. Even then, that’s a very light breakfast (usually a couple of soy breakfast sausages).

I work at a white-collar job, and a normal work day runs from 8:30 until 5:30 or so. Lunch is around 11:30am unless I have a meeting during that time. Dinner is once I get home, typically around 6:30 or 7. Of those two meals, dinner is almost always the bigger meal.

19

When at home: breakfast shortly after I get up, which is usually at around 900. This is either two slices of bread or a bowl of yoghurt with fruit. Lunch at 1200. Two slices of bread.

Mid-afternoon snack between 1400 and 1530: half a cup of nuts and some fruit. Dinner = main meal at 1900, immediately followed by 60 grams of cookies. Could be earlier or later depending on my activities, though.

I consider dinner my main meal even though it may only be 500 kcal (or 700, but rarely much more than that), which you can easily eat in the form of an unhealthy snack.

When I have meetings I may eat breakfast on the go and/or eat out for lunch or pack a lunch, I’ll bring nuts and fruit if possible or eat half a chocolate bar instead.

I used to live in Spain where restaurants that don’t cater to tourists don’t even open until about 2100. Once at a work dinner they served desert after midnight! That’s no way to live, even if most of Spain is further west than Britain but Spain is on a very unnatural central European time (GMT+1). But here in Holland lots of people eat dinner at 1730, which would leave you hungry later in the evening, I’d think…

20

I usually wake up between 6 and 7 and have breakfast right away. It is fairly substantial, two slices of bread (sliced very thin, but the bread is very dense) topped with a spread that I make (usually something like cottage cheese mixed with sardines) and, this time of year, tomato slices. Lunch is between noon and 1 and consists usually of two more slices of break, some cheese and an apple or pear. Dinner is usually around 6:30 or 7:00 and a bit heavier than the other two meals, usually home-cooked. I try to avoid eating between meals, although I will munch on a piece of fruit, especially now with fresh peaches and plums in season. We end dinner with one chocolate truffle each (I make them) and that puts the period on the day’s eating.