Here I am, half a year later, and still eating my two big meals a day.

I'm frankly stunned that such a simple trick has given me such great benefits. I'm just not hungry between meals. And with the holiday season, I did indulge now and then; always gluten free and as part of a meal where it's buffered with lots of fat and protein.

And I still fit into my favorite jeans, and easily now skip those indulgences as I leave Holiday Mode and get back into Everyday Mode.

Bumping to hear how everyone else is doing...

Well werebear, I have to say that a year after reading this post that you really hit it on the nailhead. With this WOE, I DON'T NEED TO SNACK. I can eat a normal portion size of a high-fat meal and buzz along for hours and hours with plenty of energy to go around. And then I forget to eat! Especially when I have a cup of coffee in the afternoon (can't give the stuff up).

Bravo on shedding light on this issue of snacking.

Great thread. I put on a little over the festive season, so need to give up the snacks and just have the meals.I have lost 3/4 of the extra, so am happy with that. I've started a food diary, which i've never done before, so it will be interesting to look back in a few weeks to assess how its going, and how the cravings/munchies feelings have gone.

Neither do I. We did get a snack in school when I was in kindergarten (1959-60), but not in higher grades. The whole snack and eat mini-meals all day concept came about with low-fat high-carb diets, and all they did was screw up people's metabolisms & make them crave and eat more.

I've come to realize that "snacking", for me, is actually medicating myself with food. I've been working really hard lately on recognizing when I'm hungry and when I'm just bored or stressed, etc. My go to has always been food to soothe myself and that is a huge part of why I'm fat, not to mention that the food I was going to was high carb/fat.

So I too am not snacking anymore. If I'm hungry, I eat and even if it's a small portion, I count it as a meal...not a snack. This way of thinking is helping me be much more in tune with my hunger and helping me make better decisions because if I just grab a handful of nuts but an hour later I'm eating a steak and then an hour later grabbing another handful of nuts...now I'm just snacking or eating to soothe myself and doing that just reinforces those bad behaviors.

Great thread - thanks for bumping it WereBear. I missed it a year ago. I've been thinking about snacking a lot lately after ready Jack Kruse's LR Rx. One thing I've noticed is how often I eat or start to eat unconsciously. Without thinking I put something in my mouth if I see it, it looks good and is on my plan. How stupid is that? Now that I've been intently not snacking I realize what a bad habit I'd fallen into. Just because something is LC doesn't mean I should eat it if it's between meals and I'm not even hungry.

I can't snack. If I do, I will graze all day long. I really have to watch my calories, they seem to affect me as much or more than carbs do.

This is a fascinating thread. I have tried it both ways--4-5 meals a day (some of which were "snacks") and two meals a day. I MUCH prefer the two meals a day. BUT, I had to drastically increase my fat intake in order to make this work for me. I have a cup of tea when I get up, a cup of coffee with whipping cream at 10:00 and then a bowl of mascarpone cheese mixed with full-fat Greek yogurt and 1/2 cup berries for lunch. This keeps me feeling good until about 4 p.m. when I have 1/3 cup of nuts (I always measure and never go over). Then, a LC dinner with meat, lots of fat and veg. Seems to be working better than anything else I've tried. I am totally comfortable (I have my hungry days but am in control and it is usually related to PMS). I am thrilled with this way of eating, since it means I have way less planning to do. I also don't have to count carbs. I'm losing about 2 lbs a week, although now that I'm within 10 lbs of goal, that seems to be slowing...sigh...maybe I'll have to make another tweak to get to my goal. Or, maybe I just need to be a little patient...

Oh...and I have gone completely off wheat--that helps a lot too.

It's been over a year...

And I'm still doing my breakfast coffee; and 2 biggish meals a day. I LOVE IT.

I've been sick for a couple of weeks, on antibiotics, which messed up my appetite. When it started to finally come back, I tried small meals... and found myself back into "snacking" which basically leads to eating all the time.

Today is the last day I have to take these pills which require food; it was a great reminder how much I enjoy my meals... and then enjoy not being tormented by wanting more food all the frakin' time.

This info is really helpful. I too realize that if I eat more frequently, I eat more frequently--if that makes sense! I guess I should say it makes me WANT to eat more frequently. Part of it is "mind hunger" but part of it is legit hunger b/c then my body starts expecting food more! So, it makes a lot of sense seeing all of your comments here. I am going to continue eating less frequently, and ONLY when I'm hungry. Alcohol seems to give me cravings for days after, so I really need to eliminate or drastically reduce it until I get to goal. I hate feeling "snacky."

Research has actually shown that thinking about food can cause the body to release insulin in anticipation of receiving food. I recall teaching my students this when I taught a biopsychology class. So thinking about food can release insulin, lower the blood sugar, and make you hungry. This must be why I can be stuffed from a meal, and become hungry immediately after if I'm watching the Food Network!

I will admit outright that I've not read this entire thread, but only read the first page and skimmed otherwise.

However, I very recently decided to go with 2 big meals per day (and no snacks.) I've been low carbing since December of 2010, so a bit over a year. I lost 60 pounds, but have been stalled for about 5 months. I need to lose about 30 more. Since I've lowered carbs and done some other tweaking to no avail, I've really suspected that I'm just at a point at which I need fewer kcals. But, I've had a very hard time achieving that with my hunger issues.

Anyway, by paying attention to my day to day, I realized that I did far better keeping food intake at more reasonable levels on weekends/days off than on work days. I finally saw the pattern. On work days, I would aspire to have 3 meals - a moderate breakfast and lunch and a larger dinner. Even so, the smaller breakfast and lunch did not satisfy me, so by dinner time, I was ravenous and would end up overeating at the meal and/or snacking after the meal. I would have periods during which I could control this, but it was difficult overall. On days off, however, I always ate a larger breakfast, and found that I just wasn't hungry for a long time afterwards.

So, I decided to try eating big breakfasts every day. I quickly realized that I just didn't need lunch, and dinner could actually be a bit smaller than breakfast, yet keep me satisfied. Even though each of these meals is larger than each of the 3-4 meals I'd previously been eating were, the overall intake has been less. I've been able to comfortably get my kcal intake down to about 1500 per day (low for me.) This is huge for me. Previously, I was eating at least 2000 kcals per day, and often more because of the grazing after dinner.

I find that I do start to get hungry a couple of hours before dinner, but it's not a gnawing, uncomfortable hunger. It's more of an "empty stomach" feeling, but I'm fine, and I know a nice dinner is coming, so I carry on about my business without issue. It doesn't take over my mind.

Overall, I find I just feel better eating larger meals less frequently.

I believe that the frequent small meals advice was born out of necessity to deal with the hunger, low blood sugar shakiness and discomfort that comes from the recommended high carb, low fat diet. Also, there is the idea that doing this will "fire up" the metabolism (which I think is probably pretty darned dubious.) Anyway, on a low carb, fat-centric diet, eating only a couple of large meals per day actually leaves me less hungry, more satisfied on fewer kcals and feeling better than smaller, frequent meals.

I have only been doing this since Wednesday (so this is my fifth day,) and I don't know if I've started losing weight again. I want to give it a fair shake, so I'm not going to weigh right off the bat. I'll give it at least another week before I do that.

Sorry to be so long; I was just glad to see a thread that is discussing the very thing I found for myself recently.

I've also started eating two large meals a day instead of 3. I haven't been a big snacker since on Atkins but for a while I started getting hungry after dinner, about 2 hours before going to bed. This really bugged me as one of the benefits of low carb is the freedom from hunger. It didn't matter how much or how low in carbs my dinner was I was hungry a few hours later.

I started reading up about IF and did a 24 hour fast last week and changed to 2 meals a day. I eat a big meal around brunch time and a big early dinner. Surprisingly the night time hunger is gone. Even when eating earlier. I've always found it easy to keep the carbs around 25 net grams but calories were sometimes trickier. With 2 meals a day it just seems so much easier. Even on days I ate 1200 calories I just wasn't hungry. I'm trying to average at least 1400, some days I go over some under and it's just so much easier eating 2 nice big filling meals a day.

I'm doing the 24 hour fast today (dinner last night to dinner tonight) and have only had coffee and water since waking. No hunger at all! I plan to have a nice dinner of sauteed chicken livers, a little bit of onion, and mashed cauliflower tonight to break my fast. I'm still very new to this but I really think I've found something that works for me!

Nice explanation Werebear. I am still learning how all this works. Up until a few months ago, all I really knew was carbs=bad b/c your body burns them first, not fat. But I have always noticed, even when not doing LC, that fasting all day except a nice big dinner made me lose my appetite, even to the point that sometimes I had to struggle to get dinner down. I think the important thing for me to remember is that as long as I'm getting a minimum of calories, it probably is best for me personally to eat less frequently.

Agreed. With my lengthy history of insulin resistance, that I only started properly addressing in Dec 2010 (in part because I didn't know how to properly address it previously,) this makes sense to me. It fits how things appear to be working in my body, if I use hunger as a clue.