Yeah for this diet i have reined in my eating times to be three meals. I will have my morning coffee with milk at any time from between when i get up and mid morning. And i think i am going to stick with it. Eating whenever you want is a bad habit.
In the afternoon anywhere between 4-6pm i have a snack of a glass of wine. I call it a snack here because it is a lot of calories and it keeps me going but really i do it because i enjoy the alcohol part. If i didn't drink this glass of wine, i would definitely have to eat some more calories somewhere else and probably have an earlier dinner.
But i try to keep not too long between breakfast and lunch - generally about 3 hours but it could be 3-4 hours.
Between lunch and dinner it could be anywhere between 5 and 7 hours usually but as i said, that wine keeps me going and essentially it qualifies as a snack.
I don't eat after dinner now at all. And i don't get hungry either. I think the time i am most likely to be hungry between meals is between breakfast and lunch for some reason.
I found at first that i did have to exercise a bit of self control and sometimes still now, i look at the clock and think hmmm keep distracted for an hour and then it will be time to eat. And that all helps.
Because you are on your feet and probably active, it might be a good idea to have some between meals too. I would keep it small and definitely not unhealthy. A piece of fruit and a cup of coffee OR a glass of milk would be good snacks.
In the afternoon, if you have to go for a long time between lunch and dinner, i would have something like a ryvita with a piece of cheese, or cottage cheese.
oops i can't remember if you are vegan, so maybe nuts are a better option. But because they are so high fat, i'd say a tomato sandwich or a cucumber sandwich would be even better.
But you know, have something that will keep you going. NOt just a tuft of alfalfa lol, if you know what i mean.
Once you get into the idea of making meals, and trying to eat around the same time every day, its gets a lot easier and it feels better than just eating without any discipline. I find that the discipline of eating a meal is really helpful and my food is so much yummier because i make a little effort preparing it. I don't spend much time cooking you realise.
Often i will cook a meal and I will be able to eat it for days. At the moment in my fridge i have cooked rice, cooked lentils, stewed vegetables, tomato sauce for pasta. All this makes putting a delicious meal together really easy.
In my freezer, i have a few different types of bread - some wraps, some seeded rolls and a loaf of sliced seed bread. I also have some seaweed for nori rolls (yum) and some rice paper for vietnamese spring rolls.
On my food shelves, i have lots of pasta, different types of rice, oats, lots of dried beans and lentils, a few different sorts of oils and vinegars, lots of spices and herbs and a few sauces like soy, fish sauce and mirin.
I also have a few cans of food. Cream of aspargus soup if i get home late and haven't got time or energy to cook. I've got baked beans. I always have some tomato paste, puree and diced tomato around in cans. And then i have the odd can of vegetables like peas, and beetroot.
All this just makes cooking easy and all i need to think of next is what vegie i want to eat. Today at lunch it was cabbage. So i put the cabbage, rice and lentils together with some prepackaged indian spices and voila! Because i wanted to use up some pickled fish i also made a small fish salad with tomato and avocado. Hey presto a two course absolutely delicious meal. And then i'm full! and happy! I don't know how many calories would have been in it, but i doubt it would burst my daily calorie intake. If it goes to 1600 instead of 1500, i'm still way down on my total maintenance calories so its all good, isn't it.
