I have just recently taken the plunge and begun to force myself to eat throughout the day. I aim for every 3-4 hours, which gives me 5-6 meals a day. The thing I am wondering is if the meals have to be strictly equal or if they can be unbalanced.
For example, today, I had a medium sized breakfast at 9am (415cals), followed by a medium lunch at 12:30 (around 600cals), followed by a light “after law school snack” at 5:00 (260cals) (too long, I know, class got in the way) and a fairly large dinner at 8:30 (825cals). Around 11:30 or so I will have a nighttime snack, likely fairly light.
Is this OK? Is it important that all meals be equal (unlikely to happen in my case, but I can try), or is it more important that you feed yourself early and often, with some imbalance in calories not being that big a deal?
What are your physique goals? Gaining/Losing weight?
When I am in a bulking phase, i.e. gaining weight, I try to “front load” calories, which means to eat as much as I can in the morning and early afternoon. This frees me up at night to not be stuffing myself to the point of throwing up, but rather just a comfortable amount of full.
Actually, if you are in a cutting phase I would try to front load as well, and depending on what dietary guidelines you are following and what time you train, eat less carbs at night, sticking to milk/cheese based products, nuts, etc, and leafy greens.
I definitely front load the carbs - my early meals have more carbs than my later meals do. As for the dinner, it just always seems like that is the larger meal, mainly because of time considerations. Breakfast I inevitably have about 3 minutes to eat before I run out the door, lunch I have to eat at the law school between class, so its usually a sandwich of some kind. But the evening meals I am at home for, so I actually have time to cook something i enjoy and will eat a decent bit of. For example this evening I had a bunch of boneless skinless chicken with some shake n bake, a salad, and one serving (half cup) of rice.
As for my goals, my metabolism is slowish, so I’m sort of on a slow cut. I am able for some reason to gain mass and lose fat at the same time, though right now I’d say my goals are fat loss primarily - if I happen to gain a little mass in the process, great, but im not expecting to grow too much.
So I guess what I should do is bump up the earlier meals a bit and knock back the dinner a bit (maybe lose the rice for example)?
if youre working out at night, as in after school, you should be eating a considerable amount of your carbs post workout.
Im in the same situation as you. I am in school all day and workout at 11pm every night. My breakfast is usually quite small due to the time requirements, but I would suggest making a protein shake and packing a bunch of crap into it which should bring the cals up higher than 450…
I got to agree with all of the above. Cutting bulking what ever. Taper your meals down in size as the day goes and eat around your training. In other words eat BIG after. So if you train at night save 1 big meal for after training.
Thankfully I train in the AM makes it all the easier.
An example of what I am currently doing on a bulk is.
meal 1 700 k/cals
train surge during 350 k/cals
immediate PWO meal High gi carbs and Grow! 450 k/cals
meal 3 800 k/cals
meal 4 600 k/cals
meal 5 600 k/cals
bed time meal 300k/cals
total 3800 k/cals.
Naow that is what I shoot for usually # 5 ends up a bit smaller due to the fact the prior meals are a bit bigger.
To change it for an evening training just move the BIG meals and traing meal up so it would be
1 700
2 600
3 600
train surge and pwo meal 800 combined
5 800
bed 300
I also agree with everyone else. Don’t worry about making each meal equal in calories, as its not as important as eating the right things at the right times. Make sure you get the bulk of your daily intake of carbs in the 2-3 hours after your workouts. For the remainder of the day, make sure you get a good amount of the good fats. As for a slow metabolism, I’m in the same boat as you. To compensate for that, I eat more than 5-6 meals a day. I’ve been known to even eat 10-12 meals a day. After a workout, I cram down at least 4 small P+C meals within 3 hours. For more info on that, check out John Berardi’s articles on The Science of Nutrient Timing.
I just finished grad school in May, so I know how difficult it is to eat during class. Take a meal replacement shake with you to class. Another thing I used to do is take a spoon and a jar of natural peanut butter to class. Almonds and various other nuts high in fat are also helpful, not to mention less messy. The most important question you have to ask yourself is: “How important is this to me? How bad do I want to accomplish my physique goals?” There are and can be no excuses. You simply do whatever it takes, even if you’ve got to break the norm and go to the extremes. But then again, if you were part of the norm you wouldn’t be reading t-nation would you?
Ok, so it sounds like my largeish dinner may not be so terrible after all. I usually lift in the evening, and eat dinner soon after lifting. So I’ll usually chug a protein shake in the locker room before I hit the showers, then eat a largeish dinner about 30mins - 1 hr after I get home - from what I’m reading it sounds like I was inadvertantly doing the right thing.
I mainly mentioned the slowish metabolism to make sense of the low calories of my day’s meals. A lot of you guys eat 3500+, my target right now is 2500 (slightly low for fat loss). I think my maintenance level is 2800-3000 WITH exercise (the book I bought (the Book of Muscle one reviewed above, i’ve been lifting 3 years, and its still great) said 3330 or so maintenance, but I know thats high for me).
But now there’s a bit of a quandry - you guys say “lots of carbs after lifting” but others say “for fat loss less carbs at night.” Since I lift in the evening, necessarily one of these will have to go out the window. Thoughts? Should I just kinda balance throughout?
Also, I find I tend to get a little more cals on days I lift, and less on rest / cardio days. I am assuming this is OK?
Anyway, thank you all for the help, I appreciate it very much.