The proper timing of your meals is essential to the success of eating every three hours. There are a limited number of waking hours in the day, so planning when your meals will be eaten is necessary to accounting for all five or six of them.

Life is full of unexpected surprises and the dreaded Mr. Murphy will mess up your schedule on occasion. With our kind of diet, these unexpected events can easily occur. So as tacky as it sounds, we must expect the unexpected. So today I will discuss how there is room for flexibility with our meal times.

The Perfect Schedule

Let’s say you have a perfect schedule planned for eating. Men eating six meals might consider times such as 6am, 9am, 12pm, 3pm, 6pm, and 9pm. Women might consider the same schedule minus the 9pm feeding.

Do you really think that you’ll be able to eat at those exact times every day? If you do you’ll only end up disappointed. When looking at the times it becomes easy to see where things can go wrong throughout the day.

The Gap Between Meals

The time between meals is used moving the food of our previous meal from the stomach to small intestine. So we can’t eat our meals too close together or we’ll be giving ourselves more calories than we need at that given time.

Numbers vary on how long it takes for food to move out of the stomach, but it largely depends on what you are eating. From my experience and that of others on this diet, it is largely assumed that natural and unprocessed foods are easy for your body to process. This will leave your stomach empty in about 2.5 hours. This coincides with around the time you will start to feel very hungry for your next meal, especially if you are on an overall calorie deficit.

Eat a Meal Early

If your boss schedules a last minute meeting right at your next scheduled feeding, then eat your next meal 15 to 30 minutes early. Shrinking the time after the previous meal to 2.5 hours will not hurt anything as your body will most likely welcome the new calories.

The downside to eating a meal early is that you now have a longer stretch to wait for the following meal. If you eat your 12pm meal at 11:30, you have an extra half an hour to wait for your 3pm feeding.

Eat a Meal Late

So your last minute meeting at 12pm has you wondering about your next meal, but preparing for that meeting prevents you from eating a little early. Your only option is to eat after the meeting.

This option really sucks if you are in the “eat every three hour groove”. You’ll feel like you are starving, probably notice a headache, and people in your immediate vicinity will take cover at your sudden mood swings.

Eating late will happen, either because you forgot or some other uncontrollable event. The best thing to do is eat your meal immediately as the opportunity presents itself.

Don’t Skip a Meal!

What if the last minute 12pm meeting lasts until 2 o’clock? Should I just wait another hour and eat at my next scheduled time of 3pm? My standard answer is no. Go ahead and eat your missed meal at 2pm. Your body will need and appreciate the calories.

After eating at 2pm, it becomes easy for you to justify eating your next meal at 6pm, since it’s only four hours away. When doing this you are shorting yourself hundreds of calories for the day. Do whatever it takes to not skip a meal. In this case consider doing the following:

Shorten the Gaps Between Meals Until You Are Back on Schedule

So you ate the 12pm meal at 2pm. Don’t stress too much, you can still get all of your meals and calories for the day. You just need to shorten the gaps between meals until your schedule is sorted out.

For example, after eating at 2pm, the remaining three meals can be scheduled for 4:30pm, 7pm, and 9:30pm (women would not do 9:30). You keep the minimum 2.5 hour gap between meals and still get all of your calories in for the day.

Of course, this method does not work well when one of the later meals gets missed; which usually is not a problem since the vast majority of people have fewer unexpected events in the evening that would prevent them from eating a scheduled meal.

Stuff Happens

There will be times when a meal will be missed and there is nothing you can do to get all of your meals consumed on that day. Being a few hundred calories short on a single day is not going to hurt much in the grand scheme of things. Just get back on schedule the next day and move on with your life.

If you find that missing meals happens several times a week, you may want to take a close look at your life and decide what the true reasons are for missing that meal. Is it really out of your control or are you getting a little lazy?

Do you have a meal schedule you would like to share? How about ideas for eating around life’s curve balls?

This is the eighth article in the Get Started Eating Every Three Hours series that outlines how to start eating every three hours and the benefits of such a diet.

Now that you have your meals planned and your food already precooked, it comes time to actually assemble your meals. Typically, this is done in advance so that you don’t have to worry about it when meal time arrives.

Meal assembly is simply the process of grabbing the precooked portions of carbs, protein and fats that you have on your meal plan and preparing them for either eating immediately or taking with you to eat later. Here is how it is done:

Assemble enough meals to last until you get home 

The number of meals that you need to prepare is going to depend on your situation. For me, I cook my first breakfast fresh and then I’ll assemble three meals to take to work. This would be my second breakfast, first and second lunches. If I suspect I’ll be working late at the office for some reason, I’ll assemble a fourth meal to take with me. At home I will assemble my first and second dinners as needed, I may even cook one of them fresh.

On the weekends I typically assemble the meals as needed. If I’m leaving the house for more than a few hours, I’ll assemble a meal and take it with me. I personally find it easier to assemble a few meals in Tupperware dishes in advance, then I only have to pop open the container and eat, thus saving the assembly time. 

If you work in a place that has a dedicated kitchen, you may be able to get away with assembling your meals as needed. The only prerequisite would be to keep your cooked and/or vacuum sealed food in your work fridge.

Assemble meals that can be easily reheated or eaten cold

When taking meals to work, you probably don’t have access to much more than a microwave at the office. As such, those midday meals should not include anything that must be cooked on a stove-top or baked. For example, eggs might not be a good protein choice for work as you would have not way to cook them (unless you already hard boiled them). The meals you are taking with you should comprise of food that you cooked during your bulk cooking session. 

Show as little or as much creativity as you like

There are many ways to assemble a meal. For example, if a meal calls for 4oz of chicken, 3oz of red potato and 1.5 cups of steamed mixed veggies, you have a couple of options for assembly:

You can dice the chicken and potato then toss into a Tupperware bowl  and mix it up with the veggies. That would be the quick and easy bachelor-style method of doing things; which is how I like meals on the run.

Another option is to get one of those Tupperware containers that are like cafeteria plates with compartments for each portion of food, but with a sealable lid. You can have your chicken breast, some potato, and a batch of veggies all laid out like a nice home cooked meal.

What I don’t like about the second option is the larger container that must be packed around. You also will need a knife in addition to your fork to cut up the food when you eat it. This option is better when assembling the meal for immediate eating at home since it makes me feel like I’m having a real, i.e. traditional, dinner.

Some meals may need to be assembled when you eat

While assembling your meals, you will discover that there are some obvious combinations that should not be made until you are ready to eat. Your breakfast may include Grape Nuts and milk. Keep these in separate containers until feeding time. Just be sure your milk goes into a plastic container with locking lid that has a rubber gasket to prevent leaks.

I found that high quality lean turkey is very moist. If your meal calls for a turkey sandwich, keep the turkey away from the bread until you are ready to eat. Bread has a tendency to soak large quantities of turkey-juice. Yuk.

Due to the extra separating, you may have seven Tupperware containers for only three meals. This is perfectly fine.

Double check before leaving the house

What I find frustrating is spending time planning the meals, cooking, preparing and assembling, only to forget a critical portion of food such as a serving of veggies or protien.

So, once I think I’m done assembling my meals I will peek into each Tupperware dish and make sure I added what is on the meal plan. There are always a couple times in the month where I catch a mistake. These errors are more common when dealing with vastly different meal plans from day-to-day.

If your meal plans are stored on the computer, it may be worth while to print out the spreadsheet so you can have it in the kitchen. This helps ensure you get the right foods with the correct portions without having to memorize anything. Once you get the hang of assembling meals, you can skip printing it every day.

Don’t assemble meals more than a day in advance

If you have ample portable plastic containers to do so, you may be tempted to assemble two or three days of meals at once. If your meals are the basic mixed bowls of food as described above, I discourage mixing food to early. Flavors have a tendency to mix together over time, firm veggies become soggy, soft veggies become mush, and chicken becomes rubbery. This is not very appetizing. From my experience, I found these “mixed bowls” tend to do okay for a day; don’t assemble your meals too far in advance!

Enjoy a fresh meal every once in a while

There is not much fun in eating reheated food with every meal. As I mentioned before, I always cook a fresh breakfast that includes oatmeal and an egg-white omelette (among other things). Sometimes I cook one of my dinners fresh so that I can enjoy a nice home cooked three-course meal. 

Once you get into the routine of eating every three hours, you may will  become sick of being in the kitchen and just settle on reheated food. This often happens to me. However, I’m a bachelor and can get away with such things. For those of you that have family at home that is not on the same diet plan, they will very much appreciate when you eat the same dinner as everyone else. Hopefully you won’t me making them eat reheated food every day. ;)

What are your thoughts on assembling your meals in advance? Do you have any tips or advice to simplify the process?

This is the fifth article in the Get Started Eating Every Three Hours series that outlines how to start eating every three hours and the benefits of such a diet.

Now that you are armed with the knowledge of about how many calories you require and how to keep a food log, it’s now time to plan the meals you will be eating each day.

This step is crucial, and perhaps the most difficult, to your success in eating every three hours. It is very easy to eat too many calories when eating five or six meals a day; as such, you must plan your meals before you start eating. It does not make sense to figure out how many calories you consumed after the fact. Make the decision of what you are going to eat throughout the day in advance.

This post is longer than normal and contains a large amount of information. You will not master it right away. Meal planning takes practice. Before you realize it this will all become second nature.

Make a list of foods

I mentioned this in Essential Info to Track in Your Food Log, and I’ll mention it once again because it is relevant here. Make a spreadsheet with a list of foods that you are going to eat on a regular basis. This is separate from the food log itself.

Having this “master list” of foods will make for quick reference and allow you to cut & paste food entries directly into your food log or journal.

Plan the meals for the entire day

The primary goal of meal planning is to figure out what you’ll be eating for the entire day; that is all five or six meals. The benefit is not only to save time, but allows you to know what meal substitutions you can it make if it becomes necessary. If you decide to go out with your friends to lunch (to eat healthy of course), you should have an idea of how many calories that unplanned meal is replacing. You may find that you still need to eat part of your planned lunch even after eating out in order to get the correct number of calories.

Currently, my afternoon meals (lovingly called lunch’s 1&2) are 480 and 460 calories respectively. However, on Tuesday afternoons I go out to lunch with a friend. We often end up at Applebees which has a Weight Watchers page in their menu. I pick something from this section because the calories, carbs and fats are listed for my convenience. To my surprise many of these items are between 300 and 350 calories. If I were to eat one of these meals with no consideration of calories, I would be shorting myself over 100 calories in a single meal. This will most likely lead to me being tired and drowsy at work. After eating one of these meals, I’d go back to work and eat about 100 calories from one of my lunches. If I did not have my calories for the day planned in advance I would have no idea if I would be low or high on my desired calorie intake.

In summary, plan all of your meals in the food log before you even eat your first breakfast.

Beginners: Worry only about calories, but track macronutrient ratios

When I first started eating every three hours, I went through the trouble of trying to get the calories in range in addition to balancing the macronutrient ratios (carbs, proteins and fats). It is a headache to get your calories just right, only to find that you need 10% more protein.

Too keep things simple, I recommend the beginner only focus on getting the calories on target. If you are shooting for 2000 calories a day, your goal should be between 1950 and 2050. You will rarely be exact so don’t waste time trying.

Spread your calories throughout your five or six meals. This does not have to be exact either. It usually is better to have the larger meals around your most active times. For me this is the morning, so my breakfasts are 200 calories more than my last two meals. What you want to avoid is having a 1000 calorie meal and five 200 calorie meals. Spread out the calories!

Even though you are only aiming for your calorie target, enter the macronutrient information in your food log. This will be necessary for when you make the leap to the more advanced method of meal planning. The transition will be easier if you already know what you have been eating. You may find that very few adjustments are necessary.

Advanced: Worry about the calories and the macronutrient ratios too

To get the most out of the Eat Every Three plan you need to balance your macronutrient ratios. Counting calories alone is not going to cut it. This is especially true if you are training for an event, or desire a specific physical appearance (beach body). The older you are, the more necessary this becomes.

At first glance, the following will seem unnecessarily complicated. Please bear in mind that once you run through a few weeks of meals like this, balancing macronutrients will be a piece of cake. Here we go…

Balancing your macronutrient ratios is simply a matter of splitting your calories between carbs, proteins and fats. You may choose 50% of your calories go to carbs, 30% protein, and 20% fat. This is a good starting point for most people. Since everyone is different, don’t get married to this ratio. Feel free to play around with 10% in any direction. Try a ratio for a week before changing. You may find a specific ratio is definitely wrong (you may feel sick or tired off too few carbs and too much protein). Simply change back to something that is more comfortable.

Nutritional labels on your food will rarely have how many calories of carbs are in each serving. Instead they often show the number of grams. This is a simple conversion: carbs and proteins have 4 calories per gram; fat has 9 calories per gram. So, if a serving of food has 5 grams of carbs, that equals 20 calories of carbs. 2 grams of fat is 18 calories.

For example, a serving of oatmeal (1/2 cup pre-cooked) is 150 calories, 27g carbs, 5g protein, and 3g fat. If you do the math this equates to 108 calories carbs, 20 calories of protein, and 27 calories of fat (oddly enough it adds to 155). The ratio for this serving of oatmeal comes to 72% carbs, 13% protein, and 18% fat (give or take a percentage point or two). As we can see, oatmeal clearly belongs in a carb category.

Unfortunately, oatmeal does not make a very good meal by itself. We’ll need to make an effort to eat more protein because we are shooting for a 50/30/20 ratio. Figure the ratio for some eggs or egg beaters. Toss in an apple and flaxseed oil and see what you get.

Like calories, you will not get exact on the ratios. Your goal should be to have the entire day’s meals balance out to the proper ratios with a +/- 5% on any macronutrient. It is okay to have one meal slightly out of balance on carbs if another is a little heavy in protein. Avoid having an all carb meal then a separate all protein meal. Each meal should combine your carbs, proteins, and fats for maximum benefit.

Before writing this post, I never once “did the math” on oatmeal. This was my first time. My spreadsheet has always done the brainy work for me. Balancing meals is much easier when the task is automated. Even if you do the math by hand, you’ll only have to do it once for each of the meal items on the master food list, and then it is only a matter of balancing the meals.

Portion sizes

Regardless of if you opted to use the beginner or advanced method of tracking your food intake, you may have trouble getting the calories or macronutrient ratios correct. You will soon discover that serving sizes are to blame.

To get the ratios correct, you may have to come up with your own custom serving or portion sizes. Since the oatmeal container says ½ cup pre-cooked is a serving does not mean this is a serving for YOU. Maybe you can do a 1/3 cup and get the desired results… of course this involves additional math.

Experiment with the portion sizes, but avoid getting too crazy. 3.754 ounces of turkey may get the exact protein you need, but 3.5 or 4.0 will get you close enough. Stick with portion sizes that are easily measured.

Make meal planning a habit

Get out of bed, take care of business, get your coffee, and then plan your meals. You may opt to plan your meals before going to bed. Whatever you do, make meal planning part of your routine.

There are weeks I’m lazy and the meals change very little from day to day. I have six unique meals, but they tend to repeat from day to day as long as I don’t run out of anything. Others go through the trouble of coming up with a unique cuisine every day. Do what works for you, just as long as it becomes a habit.

How do you plan your meals differently or have any tips to share?