I have to admit, I’ve always struggled with this. I’m generally not hungry for hours after I wake up, which often means I combine breakfast/lunch or skip breakfast and move straight on to lunch, leaving me with 2 meals a day.
Dinner is the only true sit-down meal we enjoy together. It’s by no means massive amounts of food — just the most substantial, whereas our lunches are often eaten separately. That said, if/when we go out for lunch, we often have a smaller dinner.
I also don’t like eating a lot for lunch in general bc it makes me feel sluggish.
5 Likes
Harters
(John Hartley - a culinary patriot, cooking and eating in northwest England)
2
Exactly. There are relationship reasons not to skimp on dinner.
My dad sometimes repeated the saying, “Breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper.” Dad, however, didn’t really have any real influence in the kitchen or at the table, so Mom generally provided breakfast like a prince, lunch like a pauper, and dinner like a ravenous horde.
@ricepad I think your mother and my mother went to the same cooking school Even after I moved out on my own (and I was the last one to leave the nest) she was still cooking as if she had a family of five to feed. It took years for her to stop doing that.
I usually have a standard North American eating pattern. Breakfast on a weekday is usually a smoothie on the days I work in the offfice since I’m too rushed in the morning to have a proper sit-down breakfast at home. The days I work from home is usually overnight oatmeal (because I actually prefer that to cooked oatmeal) or toast and peanut butter when I have a little more time before my workday starts. Sometimes I’ll live dangerously and have a smoothie on my work from home days too Saturday I usually have something substantial since it’s cleaning day and I have a late lunch on those days then Sunday is a “fry up” (albeit a healthy one) and a big mug of tea while watching my soap (Coronation Street).
Lunch is something I can make the night before or even the weekend before. During the winter months I will often have soup for lunch and usually on the days I work in the office so I can make it over the weekend and put a couple of servings in my Tupperware soup mugs so I can just grab-and-go when I leave for the office. The days I work from home is usually a salad or sometimes a sandwich.
Dinner is when I have my substantial meal because I have more time to cook and also because the cooking process is a form of relaxation for me. And also more time to eat. I am constantly being interrupted at work, even during my lunch break and even when I am working from home.
I think technically the biggest meal of the day should be breakfast since we’d have the day to work it off, but I don’t have time to cook a big breakfast, especially during the week, and like @linguafood I would feel too drowsy after eating all that food first thing in the morning.
Ever since my medical issues, I’ve been trying to eat less at dinnertime. Viewing pics of my WFD posts from years past, I sometimes wince at the amount of food on the plate. Portions served in the hospital were much smaller than I was used to, BUT they were filling me up. Some steamed broccoli and a seasoned and baked chicken tender was my dinner the first night home.
Since then, I find I do better if I have less than I used to for dinner; even if it’s just a small bowl of cereal.
So ideally, mine would be a small breakfast, a medium lunch (usually leftovers) and a small dinner.
Breakfast - travel mug of coffee and a package of Kind breakfast bars. Eaten at school generally after I walk 2 miles on the track and before the kids arrive to first block.
Lunch - rice and beans (unless chicken, but usually beans). Other ingredients may vary. I have 30 minutes for lunch, assuming a student doesn’t stop in for help.
Dinner - A protein, vegetable, and a carb. Beverage is usually seltzer. Unless it’s been a garbage day, and then it’s delivery that will often comprise the first 3 ingredients in some form. And then the beverage is “adult”. This is generally the only time BF and I will get to eat together, so it’s a bigger meal than the other two. Just how it is and no particular interest in changing that.
Weekends:
Brunch - this often involves eggs, cheese, and a carb. And coffee.
Dinner - varies, but is also larger than brunch. And has multiple beverages (adult).
I did the bigger, high protein breakfast and it’s helpful in the ways the article suggests. It took some time to adjust but digesting most of your calories during the day when you’re busy, makes sense. Big breakfast meant I didn’t get hungry until around 3 or 4. I adjusted the formula however, don’t eat lunch but eat a moderate size dinner around 6 or 6:30, a senior portion if you will…bigger than a child meal about 1/3rd less than full diner.
1 Like
BarneyGrubble
(Fan of Beethoven and Latina singers)
8
I’m tending more and more to making dinner the smallest meal of the day, and if possible, eating before 5:30, and avoiding anything that’s tomato-based, to avoid the chance of reflux.
Reflux here, too, so I don’t eat after around 8PM. I limit portions in dinner, and in lunch (I had too much at lunch yesterday and suffered all day from reflux).
When Im working from home, dinner is usually small-ish. Breakfast is a little more substantial simply because Ive found I function better with protein and whole grains for breakfast.
Lunch (if I eat it at all) is usually something small…a bagged salad, a sandwich, or leftovers.
Dinner at home is then protein, veg, and a carb, ams could be literally anything.
The downfall comes when I’m on the road, doubly if Im traveling with others…dinners tend to be too at that point (too much, too heavy, and too late)
I’m with you. Even if this advice is medically sound, our society has built and structured our lives around these 9-5ish work or school days for much of our lives, so this pattern doesn’t really work for many. I don’t see this as an American thing - I see the same in a lot of countries, where work is largely shaped by corporations and their rigid schedules. Spain has a lot of places that actually close down during those lunch time hours that can make that lifestyle easier.
I barely ever wake up hungry, and when I do, drinking tea or coffee will stave it off. At work, I can’t do heavy lunches or I’m sluggish for the rest of the day. Dinner is now the only meal of the day I really plan and try to enjoy. The time restricted eating schedules have helped with pushing me to stop eating earlier, and the work schedule means cooking will tend to be for simpler meals. I would love to see them do some sort of comparison or overlay with the time restricted eating trends where breakfast is often skipped. If someone did both, and stopped eating by 5pm, is that the gold standard?
I suppose in the framework of IF it might be, but I don’t do IF, and my lunch/first meal of the day is often not until early-mid afternoon, so I wouldn’t be hungry again before 5pm. We usually have dinner any time between 7-8:30, with a small sweet treat later that evening… which is mos def not the gold standard, but quality of life > any standards
I’m not sure if the trick is big lunches or simply some form of intermittent fasting as suggested here and to some degree in the article. A few years ago I changed my routine and saw immediate results. Coffee, a little bit later (30-60 mins after brushing teeth), breakfast later (around 10 am and pretty much half of what it was). Light lunch at around 1 and normal dinner between 5:30-7 depending on the day.
So much of the changes were for the morning routine which eliminated snacking for the entire day and resulted in around 14 hours of no food. Easy to do at home, not so much when I travel
One thing I do every morning is drink 2 glasses of water when I wake up, and then way 30-45 mins before eating breakfast. One it rehydrates and makes you a little full.
When we retired, eating our big meal at lunch became the norm. We ate out a lot and lunches were cheaper, more reasonably size, and easier to time. (We usually went at 1pm, when the lunch crowd thinned out.) We don’t go out as much, but lunch is still the big meal.
Even after I moved out on my own (and I was the last one to leave the nest) she was still cooking as if she had a family of five to feed. It took years for her to stop doing that.
Saturday I usually have something substantial since it’s cleaning day and I have a late lunch on those days then Sunday is a “fry up” (albeit a healthy one) and a big mug of tea while watching my soap (Coronation Street).
