Do you really need to eat 3 meals a day? We asked the nutrition expert

Three balanced meals are often recommended as a healthy way to maintain a healthy diet and get adequate nutrition. But if you are like me and have an unpredictable eating pattern, getting three meals every day may be difficult. I like to eat a snack throughout the day, I don’t like making a cooking effort and even overcoming meals until I am so comment I can barely think straight. I know that I am not alone in the struggle to serve the three lifestyles per day.

According to the National Survey for Health and Nutrition, the percentage of people who consume three meals per day Decrease From the 1970s to 2010 (73 % to 59 % in men and 75 % to 63 % in women). I was ventured by guessing that these numbers had decreased more in 12 years since this poll, as stress and exhaustion have reached a degree of fever in recent years.

This made me wonder how important it is to eat frequent meals? Why are not two meals (or the famous era) safe? And why is it difficult to eat three meals a day? I spoke to the nutritionist and a pigeon in the research to find out. Here is how my eating habits turned into the best.

Three meals per day: a story of origin

Although we now take it as a Muslim by it, the division of your daily diet into three meals -breakfast, lunch and dinner – It was not always the standardAnd still is not in some places in the world. Before manufacturing, I also told the dining historian at New York University Amy Bentley Atlantic OceanPeople in the United States tend to eat only two large meals, providing their bodies with outdoor work. In ancient Rome, It was the habit for one big mealIn addition to two small snacks.

In the United States, our eating habits are now organized around working days or school days. But aside cultural standards, there is no scientific reason for you to eat exactly three meals every day.

Marisa Kai Milok, a feeder -registered nutritionist for the nutritionist who Specialized in stopping eating. “Every person is different and there is a research on all parties to the spectrum of the number of times you should take” a day. “

Over the years, there have been studies Benefits for more frequent mealsAnd as well as studies that show the negative aspects of it. Some research has also found benefits for eating less frequent and larger meals – – I have guessed – the negative aspects of it.

However, the recommendation of three ways a day did not come out of nothingness. In some sense, all this belongs to mathematics: the average person of 2000 calories requires daily, and you are only awake for several hours. “In all practices of health research and practices that peers reviewed, three meals per day are a general recommendation to encourage consistent and sufficient energy,” said Milok. She added: “Unless someone lacks a dangerous time in time or safe access to food, I will not recommend eating less than three meals a day, because this will require a large amount in one session in order to meet the basic needs.”

However, mathematics can change depending on your health needs and the schedule, not to mention many other quantitative measuring factors – such as, in my case, love of snacks.

The most important of the number of meals, Milok said, is consistency. It can be to skip meals, wait throughout the day to eat and other unexplained eating patterns a set of unintended results, from increased blood pressure to high or low blood sugar.

How do you know if eating patterns are healthy?

“The experience of frequent mood swings, hanger, irregular passion, uncomfortable hunger, eating with a feeling of urgency and abuse are common signs that you may need to re -evaluate eating patterns and relationship with food,” Milok explained.

But eating regular meals, in some way, is much more difficult than it seems, at least for people like me.

Why eat three meals a day is very difficult

Sometimes the choice of moving away from the schedule of three meals per day-choice. But even if you like to have breakfast and suitable for lunch and dinner every day, this may be difficult. You cannot always control when you get a moment to sit and eat, or what food options are available. Mental health and Stress can also affect appetite.

Let’s call things the names of things: eat work. Preparing the meal of physical and mental work, in addition to time and money. Even the discovery process What You can feel eating it as an irreplaceable obstacle when you have a million thing in your mind. This before You represent the culture of the diet, which makes meals more charged and exhausted through equal thinness and health, and health for an ethical virtue. (If your goal is just losing weight, the timing and frequency of the meal involves another type of mathematics.)

There is a lot of pressure to eat the “correct” number and the type of meals and Cook them all, using complete new ingredients. On a budget. While working and caring for loved ones. He said it is easier than doing it.

Sometimes it is more convenient … Don’t do all of it, and reach a snack instead. While the number of people who eat three meals a day has decreased over the past few decades, people eater more Calories in general; We are just getting More these calories of snacks now.

In some countries, it is relatively easy to access food foods – this is essential – You don’t have to cook yourself. For example, the local corridors in Mexico and Ghana make it easy to walk on the road and get a cheap and completely cheap meal (delicious) made of local protein and products, or a group of fresh local fruits. Not so in many places in the United States.

However, the idea that you must cook all your meals at home is a relatively modern phenomenon. In the past, only families have a space for a home kitchen and aid to help Eat cooked meals at home every day. In cities, people of working class ate cooked food from small restaurants and street vendors. Collective eating is also a dear tradition in many cultures, whether in the United States or all over the world.

Three meals per day are not some magic numbers; It is just a standard to help ensure that enough eating is consistent – and modern life in this country makes it very difficult. So what can you do about that?

3 tips for eating 3 meals

First things: accepting that the struggle to cook three meals at home every day is not a personal failure. But you don’t have to wait for changes at the community level to reduce some frustration. Here are some tips that helped me, and may also help you.

1. Go back to the basics

As you know now, three meals per day are not a golden base. But if you are struggling to eat regular meals at all, Milok told me that it usually advises its customers to give priority to eating three meals daily first and foremost.

“When your body does not trust that the food will be constantly available, it goes to the fighting or flying mode,” she explained. The daily meal schedule provides a “solid basis” that allows you to rebuild confidence in your body and reorganize your appetite.

This does not mean that it will be smooth sailing. I used to skip lunch by chance or postpone dinner for a very long time, and this did not disappear. But the presence of a clear goal was to be incredibly beneficial. Every time I managed to have breakfast, lunch and dinner successfully, I learned what I felt to enjoy life with consistent energy instead of brain fog and hanging.

2. Practice non -judgment

Over the years, I tried a lot Among the different ways to overcome myself and get my three meals. But I can’t really say I was able to succeed until I finally gave up trying to eat “right” foods and the “correct” way. Instead, I focused on what was realistic and comfortable for me: How can I get the nutrients I need, while taking all the barriers in my life?

By removing any judgment on what is made of your three meals, you may be more likely to eat them. For me, this meant adding a meal subscription and shaking the meal to my daily routine. For others, this may mean delivery of groceries, or helping to prepare the meal from your community, canned or stomach foods, food trucks or cheap easy products (such as bananas).

Focus not only on health, but on ease – even when this means eating things that I felt “should not” “should not” eat – changed everything for me. With every day, I remember myself that I deserve all the money and effort it requires to feed myself. I forgive myself to live in a culture and an age that does not make my physical feeding easy, and I have to care for myself in any way I though.

3. Check with yourself

After you feel comfortable with three meals a day, according to Miluk, you can focus on setting your body signals and using Hunger To keep the eating schedule that suits you best. This means taking into account your nutritional preferences, health needs, values, schedule and accessibility. A professional dietitian can help you guide you on this trip, but remember that there is no prescription suitable for everyone for when or what you eat.

Milok said: “The key to knowing the timing of the optimal meal for yourself is to control the world around you and get honest with yourself.”

I recommend it to know this is to ask yourself the following questions:

• How do I feel when I eat breakfast, lunch and dinner constantly when you skip a meal?
• Do my meals and/or snacks keep me up to my next meal or a snack?
• When I go to long periods of time without a meal or a big snack, do I notice any changes in my focus, energy or mood?
• Do I care about my body signs when I am hungry and when I am full?
• Are there any patterns of my appetite? Will my appetite remain stable throughout the day, or do I find that I am eating more at certain times of the day?

For me, it turns out that eating three meals daily is in fact the most feasible way to reach my daily needs while working in a 9 to 5 job. Given the number of times I feel hungry and how much I like to eat in one session, this is logical. You might decide that living at the best of your life means eating two ginkine meals as farmers used to, or eat a snack from morning to night. “Some people may consider themselves” shepherds “and there is nothing wrong with that,” Milok assured me.

She said: “This is the reason that confidence and control in the individual’s body is more important than any rule or booklet than a healthy diet,” she said. “A scientific study can say that taking 12 times a day is the best for longevity, but who applies to it realisticly?”