The goal is to eat every 3 to 4 hours in order to keep your blood sugar consistent and for your stomach to optimally digest. Setting this schedule consistently across days can also help curb overeating which can lead to bloating or indigestion.
Timing and Weight-Loss Takeaways
Overall, the takeaway here is this: while it's highly individualized, some general guidelines suggest that eating breakfast by 9 a.m., lunch between 12 p.m. and 2 p.m., and dinner at least four hours before bed can set your body up for optimal digestion and absorption of nutrients.
"Across all peer-reviewed research and health practices, three meals a day is a general recommendation to encourage consistent, adequate energy intake," Miluk said.
Our digestive system takes 3 to 4 hours to digest the food completely. So, the ideal gap between your breakfast-lunch and lunch-dinner should not be more than 4 hours. Exceeding the time limit may cause acidity in the stomach.
Skipping breakfast and eating a late dinner tends to increase hunger levels and decrease daily average calorie burn, according to a small study published October 4, 2022, in the journal Cell Metabolism.
The study also suggests that skipping breakfast or dinner might help people lose weight, since they burned more calories on those days.
Plan to eat breakfast within an hour of waking. This way, your breakfast doesn't blend into a mid-morning snack or grazing followed closely by lunch. Lunch should be about four to five hours after breakfast. For example, if you ate breakfast at 7 am, eat lunch between 11 am and noon.
When it comes to a healthy diet, when you're having your meal is as important as what you're eating. The best time to have breakfast is within two hours of getting up. “The sooner you eat breakfast after you wake up, the better it is for your metabolism,” says Larson.
The Theory: Nutrition experts tend to recommend eating 3 balanced meals (350 to 600 calories each) and 1 to 3 snacks per day (between 150 and 200 calories each). The calories for each meal and snack depend on a variety of factors including, height, weight, age, gender and activity level.
However, other studies show that while consuming 1,000 calories a day may result in significant weight loss, most people cannot sustain it and often experience significant weight regain . The reasons include regaining lost muscle mass and increased appetite. Also worth noting is that the human body can adapt.
For most people, there are no serious dangers involved in eating one meal a day, other than the discomforts of feeling hungry. That said, there are some risks for people with cardiovascular disease or diabetes. Eating one meal a day can increase your blood pressure and cholesterol.
Rather than going for three to four high-calorie meals in a day, one should eat every four hours to shape your belly.
The Missing Link Between Breakfast and Health
But recent studies have found no difference in weight between those who skip their morning meal and those who don't. It is, however, well-documented that regular breakfast-eaters tend to have lower rates of heart disease, high blood pressure and high cholesterol.
There's no set time you should stop eating to lose belly fat, but, as a guideline, you should avoid eating two to three hours before bed to stop it from disrupting your sleep and body clocks, which can cause belly fat gain. Studies show early dinners can help people lose weight.
Some suggest that having 5-6 small meals in a day is better than having 3 large meals in a day as it helps to boost metabolism, resulting in quick weight loss.
When you don't eat often enough in a day, you'll experience a drop in blood sugar, or glucose, the main sugar found in your blood. Low blood sugar can make you feel tired, dizzy, sluggish, shaky and like you may pass out.
"Breakfast Is The Least Important Meal Of The Day" outlines a behavior-based weight-loss program based on a pilot study run by the author, a medical physician.
So, the science seems to say the healthiest way to eat throughout the day is to have two or three meals, with a long fasting window overnight, to not eat too early or too late in the day, and to consume more calories earlier on in the day.
Breakfast is often called 'the most important meal of the day', and for good reason. As the name suggests, breakfast breaks the overnight fasting period. It replenishes your supply of glucose to boost your energy levels and alertness, while also providing other essential nutrients required for good health.