Does It Really Matter How Much You Eat Each Meal?

“Wow, that’s a lot of food.”

This was my cousin’s remark last night when he saw I was frying up more chopped pork loins, broccoli and udon noodles.

This is on top of the small portion of udon noodles, carrots, onions, and pork loin he had leftover and told me I could have it.

As someone trying to lose weight, I told him about the fact I was in a famine state where basically my body won’t lose weight because it’s storing calories — and therefore weight — due to the fact I’m eating fewer calories overall. As such, I need to be eating more calories in order to pull myself out of it and potentially see some results.

He then proceeded to suggest looking at alternative eating methods. Cutting back on dinner or following a regimen that bodybuilders have where they eat the same meal three times a day.

It’s rude coming from him considering my cousin is not active at all and is making no effort in improving his health while telling me — in a roundabout way — how to be living mine. However, his suggestion does speak to a common saying you hear a lot when eating food and dieting.

“Eat like a king for breakfast, eat like a prince for lunch, and eat like a pauper for supper.”

It’s an adage that has been adopted for a long time now and suggests that our largest meal for the day is breakfast and the smallest ought to be supper.

This can also suggest that you take in most of your calories for the day in breakfast and lunch and very little once supper comes around.

But does this all really matter?

Most People Don’t Follow The Adage To Begin With

While researching for this article, time and again doctors and dieticians remind us that breakfast is the most important meal of the day.

It’s the time where you are breaking fast from last night's supper and during the period where you’re sleeping and getting up. The adage dictates that we should be stuffing our faces full with a large meal.

This is followed by some snacking in between and gradually making smaller meals over the course of the day.

This advice does make sense though and on the surface level, biology confirms it to be true when you consider the circadian rhythm — our body clock that helps us to determine what time it is.

Thanks to that rhythm, our body is able to dictate when we should be getting up, and getting to bed. But it also tells us the ideal time to be digesting food over the course of the day.

But despite the science making it clear, people’s eating behaviours haven’t shifted at all. In fact, a study found that our largest meals are still around supper time — where we eat half of our daily kilojoules in that meal.

If They Did, It Wouldn’t Make A Difference

The fact people were still eating heavier meals at night led researchers to look at this from various angles and consider people’s eating tendencies. Through those, there were other health notions that emerged and are still prominent today.

For example, how our body functions at night is that we burn less fat and our body has a really tough time processing carbs.

The fat is speculated to do with how it’s absorbed and transported from our guy over the day and night.

For carbs, it could be from the fact there is a reduction of insulin sensitivity at night.

The fact carbs behave like that leads people to think that you shouldn’t be eating at night at all — even though night shift workers certainly do and others eat late at night overall. Or if you want to be more conservative, have a lighter meal at night or for supper.

This makes sense since the research into those carb aspects found that when people eat at night, they can have higher levels of sugar and fat in the blood and leading to developing diabetes, heart problems, and strokes.

It all seems to make sense. Though it is undercut by the fact one study reviewed 18 studies that included over 76,000 people that looked at weight gain and weight loss concerning large and small suppers.

With all that information, the study found that people who had bigger suppers weren’t heavier than those who went for something lighter. Even amongst dieters, on average, people who had smaller suppers didn’t lose more weight than those who had larger dinners.

In other words, using the adage or suggesting to balance out meals accordingly may not be as big of a deal or fitting for people.

What Does Seem To Matter Is How Much Calories You Have

What this research is actually suggesting is that what matters the most is what and how much you eat over the course of the day. When you eat the most doesn’t matter as much, just as long as it’s not before going to sleep.

From my research, eating a big dinner is fine so long as the previous two meals and snacking aren’t massive either. Overindulging at breakfast, lunch and dinner does show that you will be gaining weight (since excess calories that aren’t burned get stored into weight).

The other thing to note is that the eating is regular and is moderate enough that you have better control over your appetite. This reduces the risk of you gorging on meals too.

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