Of course you have to find what works for you personally Cissie. But the oft quoted stuff about 'starvation mode' bears little relation to human physiology. True starvation mode is when the free amino acid pool is exhausted and you start eating your own muscles for repair and maintenance. This usually takes about three days without food. The energy requirements (bearing in mind that 20-25g of glucose will have to be manufactured from either this amino acid pool or when that runs out, lean body mass for the few cells in the CNS that need glucose) of the body can be furnished from on board fat (even an apparently 'thin' person will have several weeks of visceral fat, assuming that they are not exercising intensely the whole time). When this visceral fat is exhausted, then, and only then will the metabolic rate start plummeting to try to keep you alive.

My advice, eat when hungry. Even if you go an entire day without any solid food whatsoever, your health and fatburning machinery will be far better off for it. Most human hunger is habitual anyway. Wild carnivores and omnivores usually eat but once a day. Assuming that when you do eat, you eat well (plenty of fat and protein), real hunger takes a long time to develop. Think of it this way, When you sleep you usually fast for at least eight hours, so your body can easily last at least that long between meals.

Experiment with yourself. Every day, postpone the breaking of your overnight fast by ten minutes. See if you don't feel the better for it.

Unfortunately, I can go days without food and experience no hunger at all! For that reason, I try to eat 4 to 5 small meals a day. I've begun using Fitday to track everything, and I failed to consume enough calories today. Only 400.

Tomorrow's another day!

I guess I eat pretty much on schedule. When Im working, I have to eat when I have the time or may not get to eat for several hours later. I have always been a breakfast eater so thats no problem. I have been feeling that Im not so hungry come lunch time on some days but I do eat since it will be late before supper. I dont snack though. 3 meals is it. I have to learn to stop when Im satisified, not full. That seems to be my biggest problem at this point.

That makes a lot of sense. Especially the not eating for 8 hours while we sleep. It is so true......our bodies don't go into starvation mode when we are sleeping. Why do we think it will when we are awake for 8 hours without eating?? I'm going to have to remember that.

Patty

i've noticed this time around i'm losing slower but eating more. when i did atkins five years ago and lost a 100 after only a few months, i ate only when hungry. i never went into starvation mode and had tons and tons of energy. i didn't give up my coffee either during these times, in fact i probably drank 5 cups a day then. i probably had only one full meal a day in the mid afternoon but in the late morning i might only eat 1-2 tbs of peanut butter or atkin's meal replacement bars...i never ate after my meal...i also never had a problem dropping weight consistently. the less you eat the less you crave doing atkins...

I definitely wait until I am hungry. That's one of the wonderful things about this woe, when you are hungry, you can EAT! But, you hungry far less often than you used to be, that adds up to weight loss. It's great.

For example, yesterday morning at about 8 o'clock, I ate breakfast. Two sausage patties and some scrambled eggs. I was not hungry again until about 3 pm when I fried up some low carb flat bread that I had cut into wedges(6 carbs total) and dipped them in mexican dipping sauce (1 carb). I did not get hungry again until 8 pm, and after deciding that I was definitely more hungry than tired, I ate some leftover beef burgandy I had made two nights before.

I know the Atkins book says not to go more than 6 waking hours without eating. But, I believe that I spent too many years eating when I was not actually physically hungry, and that's what got me into trouble in the first place. I believe our bodies were created with the wonderful ability to tell us just what we need, and if we just listen to it, and respond appropriately, all will be well.

When I am not hungry, my body is telling me I have enough energy for now. When I am hungry, my body is telling me to feed it. So, that's what I do.

So, that was a lot of rambling just to say that I wait until I am hungry to eat! LOL

I don't find this true of me at all. The past couple of months i've been doing really great, only eating when i'm hungry and i've gone down a couple dress sizes. I am never hungry when i wake up and usually go about 3-4 hours before eating. It seems to have done reall good things to my metabolism to only eat when i'm hungry!!!!

Breakfast is usually my most relaxed meal of the day. I like to sit there and just have my 1st cup of coffee first and then maybe an hour or so after I'm home......I'll have something to eat. Not necessarily because I'm hungry. I mostly do it because they say breakfast is the most important meal of the day. After that, I usually go to bed because I work overnight. When I get up around 3:00 or so I'll try to have a little something to hold me over to dinner because like I said earlier, if I wait until I'm really hungry, I will start eating things I shouldn't be.

I work ten hour days. I have to eat on a schedule, so I just keep track of the calories on FitDay to make sure it's not too many or too few calories.

Thanks for sharing your stories. I find the different perspectives on breakfasts especially interesting. Until a few months ago I thought breakfast was the most important meal of the day, now I'm not so sure.

Technically speaking, my breakfast is actually my dinner so maybe there isn't much truth in breakfast being the most important meal of the day. I eat breakfast and then go to bed for the day being as I work nights.

From everything I've read, I still think it's important to eat breakfast soon after waking. We need to eat protein regularly in order to preserve muscle. When we don't eat breakfast, we pull our fat from fat stores, but we also pull protein from muscles. I want to lose the least muscle I can while trying to lose the fat.

I guess this is one of those YMMV things, but I've done both and for me eating breakfast followed by smaller meals throughout the day works best. When we eat, we are eating for the next 3-4 hours of energy we'll need, so it might also depend on what you are going to do after breakfast. I have a desk job so my breakfasts are small. Also, by eating breakfast, I don't get to the point where I feel like I'm starving and then overeat at the next meal.

Nope. I eat every 1-3 hours, whenever I feel like it, really. I just make sure that my portions are small. I eat about 5-6 meals a day.

I have a hypothyroid condition. I have lost my appetite. I eat on schedule... or stay pretty close to one.

Your body works in rhythms, scheduled food intake can be a positive part of the natural rhythm.

Some days I eat breakfast, some days not, b/c some days I get hungry early and some days not until later. If it's late morning when I get hungry (10 or after, roughly) I go ahead and eat a bigger lunch right then and then eat a bigger dinner, too. I have found that these different things on different days seems to have helped with my weight loss...keeps the body guessing??? I do wait until I'm hungry to eat lunch and dinner. If I found that I wasn't hungry for one of those, used to happen but not any more, I decreased my portion sizes until I was hungry at mealtimes.