h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I'm one of the 'No Breakfast, No Lunch, No tea, Big supper' brigade.

It is currently 2034, and I'm about to go and have some bread and soup.

It'll be around 3/4 pint of veg soup, with three slices bread.

I usually eat around 19.00.

I'd only eat earlier if I'm out walking for the day, but even then, not before 15.00. And if it is something I've taken with me, and I'm enjoying myself or on a 'schedule' I'll often forget / overlook to eat it.

My head, usually behind my eyes, tells me I need to eat.

I've not eaten a regular breakfast for 33 years, and even now, if I'm in a B&B, I'll just have

I eat to live, not live to eat.

As to the why's or wherefore's of is it right? It's what works for the individual. Now you've reminded me, I'll go and eat now...

MMF

"I eat to live, not live to eat" I like that. Combine it with Hoo's "eat when you're hungry, stop when you're full", and i think we could just about put the global dieting industry out of business overnight

A certain War Dietician in the UK, one Dr. Magnus Pyke, recommended the way to diet was to slightly reduce what you ate, but gradually, so you condition your stomach.

He also said chew and swallow slowly, as it takes your stomach 20 minutes to tell your brain it's full. Unfortunately, with today's fast food, that message arrives too late for your brain to act, possibly causing, or at least assisting, the symptoms of obesity...

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-magnus-pyke-1558840.html

MMF

Your way is undoubtedly better, MMF. Unfortunately for me - I really. really like food. I like *good* food. And I like cooking it as well as eating it.

For some mysterious reason, though, as well as the good food, I eat crap food. Chips are my nemesis.

As chips were a luxury in my childhood, I still think they are, and rarely eat junk food. In fact processed food rarely gets a look in, bar pulses, the odd indian cause (always eventually modified) and (difficult to carry home in a carrier bag without being in a tin first).
It means nearly all my food needs preparing beforehand.

I too love cooking, but by the time it's cooked, I'm usually beyond eating. Luckily I make enough for 4 days, and survive by reheating the main food via the microwave, while cooking the rest fresh.

As I say, it works for me.

MMF

I often don't eat untill dinner time. I don't really eat processed food and most of our veg comes from our allotment. However I am very over weight but I blame chocolate!

To be honest I can maintain my weight with my eating pattern but if I want to lose some then I have to eat breakfast and lunch.

>>I've always just eaten breakfast because it's expected.

I think this expectation can be a bad thing, and that *within reason*, you should try to respond to your hunger before eating, rather than responding to convention (Of course, if you have a particular condition whereby you really should be eating despite lack of hunger, then fair enough). However, it's surely best to eat something in the morning, just because you've not eaten for several hours. Don't you feel better for it?

Recent research showed that people often eat too much just out of habit, and that you can go some way to breaking this habit through simple means. Eating with your other hand helps, as does using a smaller plate.

The current research consensus is that you shouldn't skip breakfast, and that a healthy breakfast is a 'loss leader' - consume a small amount of extra calories, burn off a lot more. Perhaps different people's metabolisms work in different ways, but I'm not convinced that people are so radically different in terms of how their body responds to feast and famine.

If you're not hungry in the mornings, this might be because of the size and lateness of the evening meal. If you skip breakfast, it slows down your metabolism because your body thinks it's being starved, and when you do come to eat again, your cravings for high-calorie food (as opposed to just the quantity of food) are much higher, because, again, your body thinks you might not get the opportunity to eat again.

http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/Goodfood/Pages/eight-tips-healthy-eating.aspx

I've been accidentally experimenting. I had lunch yesterday around 11, then didn't eat again as I expected to be fed at a party. Sadly not, so I had a packet of crisps around 7pm. Started to be hungry around 8.30am this morning, but I was in the middle of a park and couldn't deal with it. Been working on and off, although I could have made time for some toast, hunger didn't strike again until just now. But J's in the kitchen defrosting the freezer and it's a no go area - apart from the fact we let it get really empty in preparation so there's no food anyway except for a block of cheese and some sandwich spread. And jam....

Lovely. The Teenacher wants a rest from bashing at ice so he's nipping over the shop for a probably horrifically bad for me shop sandwich.

Am I the only one here who functions better with breakfast?

On a work/uni day, I'll have a small breakfast - a bowl of cereal, or a couple of slices of toast, a decent lunch if I remember to pack one or something much less healthy and satisfying from the students' union shop for lunch, and a hot dinner that's usually thrown together quickly, most often involving pasta and whatever frozen veg I have on hand.

But left to my own devices, I much prefer to have a late, large breakfast, no lunch, and a late dinner that I'll take time over preparing and eating (curries, ratatouille, soup) where the leftovers can be frozen for use during the week. So yes, two meals (usually with a yoghurt and some fruit in between), but not both at the end of the day.

Nope Mala I simply cannot function without breakkie. In fact the thing that normally wakes me up is not my alarm but hungar.

I tend to like a massive bowl of dense low sugar cereal. Preferable all bran/ museli/shredded wheat or fruit and fibre (ok that one is sugary but I like it).

Seriously no way I could get through a day at work without a filling breakkie.

FB

Another one in the 'need breakfast camp', I usually have porridge in the autumn/winter into spring, and muesli in spring/summer. At weekends I may have a bacon butty, or a boiled egg and toast.

No breakfast does not make for a happy Rockhound, As my other half now understands, bless him (he's of the type that doesn't *have* to eat regularly)

Lunch is usually fairly light and then an bigger evening meal. If I'm out on site then splitting the lunch components up over several hours works quite well (rather than stopping to have it all at once).

Count me as a third one

Big bowl of grain-based muesli type mix, with dried fruit, from the Bin Inn, slow release I believe. That can do me all day until dinner at 6 or 7.
I do have lunch - more often than needed, 'cos Ms Stress seems to feel guilty if I'm left out.

Kept trying to eat breakfast because I felt I was supposed to but it just made me feel ill..to the point that there was a very nervous minute with a pregnancy test. Eventually got to a point where I figured that I'd eat when I felt like it. I now eat odd things at odd times but on the plus side have saved a fortune in pregnancy tests. Think there is something in the body clock idea though I tend to stay up all night given half a chance.

Hmm. Kinda makes you wonder sometimes about the advice dieticians give, when it seems that few people have the same metabolism and eating habits

Have had occasion to attend a dietician a few times over about 15 years. The accepted wisdom changed quite a bit over that time, cheese, eggs and steak stopped being the root of all evil. Although with cut backs and such I think I got the same handout each visit

I was going to say I can take breakfast or leave it, but that's not really true. I just have it very late sometimes - so if I don't have it early I basically have two lunches.

I take my breakfast to work and eat it between 9:30 and 10am - because I have to leave horribly early and it gives me an extra 15 minutes in bed.

But generally it's the same thing - yoghurt & fruit with müsli or granola.

Sandwich or salad for lunch otherwise I start to wobble in the afternoon and dinner when I get home if I'm in time (if it's after 8pm I don't bother as I sleep better with a hungry growly stomach than a full one.

And put me down in the raging if I forget to eat or go too long without food. And it's taken me years to work that out.

That's true of a lot of people I know, actually - both the becoming a and the not being aware what a difference it makes to them.

Not me, of course.