Rex Trulove
Different people can have vastly different eating habits. Some people eat only one large meal a day, though they may snack now and then throughout the day. Some people eat two basic meals a day. Still other people insist on three meals per day.
Some nutritionists advocate eating many small meals each day, rather than three major ones. They tend to like citing studies that show that eating many small meals rather than three larger ones is an easier way to maintain and control weight.
There are cultures where people frequently fast for days, a week, or even longer. Fasting is seldom practiced in western culture and many people would have difficulties if they need to.
In other cultures, the daytime meal is the large one and both breakfast and evening meals are substantially smaller.
In some places, a mealtime is a special event. In other places, the food is extremely bland and often not much more than a small bowl of unseasoned cooked rice two or three times a day.
Ultimately, regardless of the culture, the society, or the location, it is usually up to the individual to determine how many times they eat on an average day. It can be quite interesting to see how different people approach their meals and the number they have on a daily basis.
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On average, how many meals do you eat per day?
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One
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Two
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Three
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More than three
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I eat whenever I’m hungry
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I frequently fast
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I eat breakfast and a main meal in late afternoon. I snack as I need to.
That is how my wife and daughter eat, also.
I eat whenever I’m hungry, usually it’ll be salad, fruits or sandwiches. I’m trying to lose the weight I accumulated when I started eating 3 meals a day
So eating whenever you’re hungry would be more than 3 meals a day, just small ones?
Small ones, like an apple, a tuna/chicken sandwich loaded with vegetables, half roll of sushi or a serving of salad. I would usually avoid anything heavy. I would limit it to around 3 meals max; usually it’s 2. So far, I’ve lost about 2 kg in a month.
Breakfast and lunch consist of a sandwich and I eat my main meal in the evening. But when I was a kid everyone had ‘dinner’ in the middle of the day. Mu Dad used to cycle home from work, eat his dinner, take a short nap in his chair, then cycle back to work 🙂 Here in the Irish countryside, the term ‘dinnertime’ means the middle of the day, regardless of when you actually eat dinner.
The term we used to use for the evening meal was “supper”, but a lot of people in the US now don’t use the word as much now. Growing up, we had breakfast, lunch, and supper. They were rigidly set by my father. Breakfast was 6 am, lunch at noon, and supper at 6 pm. If any of us were late for supper, we were not only in trouble, we also didn’t get to eat supper. ‘Late’ included walking in after everyone else had already sat down to eat. The exception was if there was a good and valid excuse.
In my household, things aren’t that rigid and they can’t be. My daughter’s work shift is quite variable, so supper is usually shortly after she gets home from work. Last night, we ate supper at about 10 pm.
More than three meals a day which include sandwiches and cereals.
I know several people who eat that way.
Right now, on the SAD (standard american diet) I eat whenever I am hungry. That’s going to change in January when I go back to low carb eating. I will probably go down to two meals and intermittently fast.
Why not just balance your diet to get it back in the 40-30-30 healthy frame? (40% of calories from carbs, 30% from protein, 30% from fats)
I can’t eat that many carbs…even with meds my sugars are hard to control unless I eat 20 carbs or less a day. I have done it before and Keto got my a1c to over 11% down to under 7%
If someone can eat a balanced diet like that, I think it’s great. Maybe once I heal my body I can try the balanced diet out.
I usually eat twice a day, should eat three meals.
I’m not sure of that. I eat one meal a day and have a couple of snacks during the day. I weigh the same that I weighed 47 years ago and can wear the same clothes, though pants would now be ‘high-water’. My waist is the same size. I’m 6’3 1/2″ and 165 pounds, back then I was 5’5″, but the same weight.
I am a firm believer in moderation. Light meals and eating dinner early always works for me.
A small breakfast, then a fruit. At noon I eat normally. Then again fruit. For dinner mostly salad and yoghurt.
So you eat three meals per day?
Type 1 diabetic here, I have to eat many small healthy meals. I eat four a day and snack in between as well.
That is very understandable in that situation. The former senior pastor of our church is also diabetic. He only eats three meals a day, but he eats a large about a jerky between them. He actually eats the same way that he did before he became diabetic. The difference is in *what* he eats. :))
True, more protein, less carbs. I eat the same was as well, just smaller portions and more often. Of course I watch my carbs and sugar closely. I have to watch out for fruits.
I think that was what bothered Pastor Jim the most. He was formerly a meat and potato kind of guy. We’re talking about a 1 pound porterhouse with a half-pound baked potato covered in sour cream, nothing else. The doctor flatly told him to cut the steak by half, cut the potato by half, omit the half-cup of sour cream, and to eat some salad and a cooked vegetable to go with the steak and potatoes. It was a learning experience because he didn’t realize that he actually liked many cooked veggies. Some foods were substantially changed, too. He loved spaghetti. He still eats it, but instead of pasta, it is over shredded, cooked cabbage. He loves it.
Oh boy that sounds good!
Pastor Jim is also a big man, though no longer heavy. He’s about 6’5″ and maybe 200 lbs. He also fits the stereotypical “lumberjack”, which was his profession for years, before he became a pastor.
That is big! And what a hard profession. He sounds like a character!
Very much so. He started this church 20 years ago, actually building the church building, and it was he who thought of starting the wood ministry. He observed that most of the people here heat their homes with wood stoves. There were many needy families who couldn’t afford to buy firewood and who didn’t know how to get their own, so the wood ministry was ‘born’.
It is all volunteer; tree falling, cutting, splitting, and delivering, but last year they gave away 185 cords of wood to the needy in the community.
The program was taken so well that Assembly of God Church made a video about it and that video is played at other AOG churches across the country hundreds of times a year as an example of how a church can help a community.