(Sort of an update to the last post.)
What I was looking for, when I was trying to figure out what my rules for meals and snacks would be, was a meal that was just not quite big enough to "hold me over" till the next meal. I wanted to eat a breakfast that was small enough that I got real hunger pangs before lunch. A lunch that was small enough that I was hearing my stomach grumble by dinnertime. I wanted to go to bed feeling a little bit empty.
I figured (and I wholly admit this is a simplistic way of thinking, but it helped), if I'm not getting real hunger signals, my body doesn't need more food; and it needs to be in "need more food" mode to start burning itself for energy. I would tell myself, when I started to get hungry an hour before dinner, that the hunger was the sensation of my body burning itself. This was a remarkably helpful mental fiction for making it through that hour without raiding the fridge.
Anyway, the point is, I tweaked my amounts until I could reliably eat meals that left me hungry just in time for the next one. That's what I say other people might be able to do to come up with their own guidelines.
(I've really come a long way. I've never even managed to let myself get to this low level of hunger for obligatory fast days.)
The small, controlled snacks in midmorning and midafternoon, it turned out, mainly served to take enough of the edge off that I wouldn't inhale my plate of food in the first 45 seconds after sitting down to lunch or dinner. I, personally, seem to need these mini-meals -- at least in this time of life -- to be able to enjoy my food. I do not think everyone needs to snack. One of my good friends, similarly nursing a biggish little girl quite a bit, and similarly active, has been doing quite well with No-S. But I couldn't find that out until I tried doing it different ways -- the same calories distributed over three meals vs. the same calories distributed over meals and snacks.
It takes time to figure out.
But I should point out that I didn't need to try different things and then wait to see if I lost more or less weight. That would take too long -- you'd have to take several days' worth of measurements before you could be sure that your change had an effect. Instead, I tried different things and waited to see if I was the right amount of hungry. That only takes a couple of hours, and I could apply what I'd learned as soon as the next day. If I didn't get hungry before the next meal, I knew I should have eaten less, or skipped a snack, or had a smaller snack. If I was ravenous and light-headed, I knew I should have eaten more at the last meal, or had a snack in between. And for the most part, I did try to keep the daily calories between 1200 and 1500. I recommend SparkPeople for that -- it's a decent, free online resource.
Oh, and another thing -- once the meal is over, it's over. When I felt guilty because the lunch I ate wasn't healthful, didn't give me all the protein or vitamins or fiber I really should be eating, I had to learn to ignore the voice in my head that says I should eat some more food so that it would make the previous meal "balanced." Meals don't have to be balanced; your whole diet does, on average. I can't tell you how hard it still is to silence the little voice inside that tells me I should eat something more because I "need" it, when I'm not even hungry. Oatmeal? You ate nothing but oatmeal for lunch? Don't you think you should have had some protein? Go open up a can of kippers or get a chunk of cheese or something. There's still time! I swear to you, the whole time I was overeating, I had really convinced myself that I "needed" all that extra food.
A great deal of this has been taking a good hard look at what I really "need" and eliminating all the stuff I'd fooled myself into becoming dependent on.
Feel free to apply that to life in general. Maybe it's not a bad idea.
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