Does Meal Timing Matter If Your Trying To Lose Weight?

Happy  Tuesday!!!

This method took me a while to get used too. I always ate when I was hungry! Now I have a developed a routine (depending on what shift I am working) that works best for me. Usually I do not eat after 7:30pm however if I do it's usually a piece of fruit or a yogurt. If you can't time your meals perfectly throughout the day, just start with just timing how late you eat. For instance just try and eat your dinner no later than 7:30 each night. Once you get the hang of that you should be able to include the best times to eat breakfast and lunch. 

If you can't lose weight, look at your own meal-timing pattern and see if it affects your ability to eat reasonable portions at each meal, exercise vigorously, sleep well, and avoid mindless snacking. Monitor your caloric intake with different meal schedules to see if there is any pattern. Do you overeat at dinner when you skip lunch? Do you snack on starchy high-fat food when you skip breakfast? 

For example, today I ate breakfast at 7:30am (a bowl of special K with a yogurt), between 9:30 and 10:30 I will have a snack (either my orange or a special K bar) depending on how busy I am around noon and 1pm I will have my lunch which will carry me over until I leave work this afternoon. Like always I have my snack bag which is just another piece of fruit and some nuts just in case I have the munchies on the ride home. Dinner tonight will be baked fish, steamed veggies and a baked sweet potato which I plan on eating between 6-630pm. 

A lot of people that I know eat when they are hungry. Also your career plays a huge part in how you eat and what time your eating. My rule of thumb is you have to crawl before you walk. So on that not try for a week and see how well you stick to your plan. Make your grocery list and plan out your meals and snacks for the entire week and map out the times you plan on eating. Now don't get upset when you can't eat during the time you had set out for. Trust me when I get a new case and I can't eat dinner at 6pm I just have to improvise and change some things around but the key is don't eat too heavy late at night. 

~Wendy