Since I'm not a morning person, I do my exercising in the evening.

I can only stand to eat a very light snack before running or doing yoga, so I often don't have dinner until after 9.

By then, I'm usually ravenous, and I can't imagine that eating a sufficiently large dinner is a bad idea at that point just because I'm about to go to bed.

They say in Spanish: Desayuna como un rey, come como un príncipe y cena como un pobre, which can be roughly translated as "Eat breakfast like a king, eat lunch like a prince and eat dinner like a poor man". The reality is that most people I know overeat for dinner.

I prefer a small meal at night, but my "meat & potatoes" Irish husband looks forward to a big supper at the end of the day. So, I cook a big supper, serve myself a small portion, and he takes the leftovers for lunch the next day.

You need to match your meals to your activity level.

When I was losing weight, I did the "Eat breakfast like a king, eat lunch like a prince and eat dinner like a poor man". That matched my activity levels during the day.

Now, because my activity level is higher in the afternoon/evening, my meals end up being about equal.

I keep breakfast to a bare minimum (dry roll + coffee in front of PC in office), and always look forward to cooking in the evenings. I enjoy the ritual of preparing dinner, then sitting down to enjoy my main meal of the day.

I train in the afternoon, right after work. Breakfast and lunch are light meals, I have some cheese and yogurt half an hour before training and when I get home after training I'm starving and thus dinner is always the largest meal I eat.

Personally, I'd rather eat my larger meals in the evening, when I have time to relax afterwards. But that's what works for me, your mileage may vary.

I've never seen any actual studies back up either approach, though. If anyone has links to research, please share - I'd love to learn more.

If I don't eat enough at dinner I wake up starving - sometimes I even wake up in the middle of the night because I'm hungry (I have a fast metabolism). For that reason I always go for it at dinner.

I would say my lunch and dinner tend to be about the same size, though lunch is sometimes larger. Breakfast is usually quite small.

I'm trying to eat a larger breakfast and a smaller dinner, but it might take a while to train myself to want a larger meal in the morning. I usually eat breakfast at work, so I get distracted and forget to finish whatever I'm eating.

I could try to get up earlier and eat breakfast at home, but I just have no appetite that early in the morning.

I exercise in the morning, and feel sluggish and nauseous if I eat more than a piece of fruit beforehand, so my breakfast is: an apple. I eat an enormous, protein-heavy lunch (usually starving by then, thanks to the workout), and a light, vegetable-heavy dinner. Works for me!

I eat a largish dinner in the evening. I eat filling but light foods during the day (greek yogurt, a grain and fruit for breakfast and a large salad with protein for lunch) as I spend the majority of my day sitting down in front of a computer so the last thing I want is to feel sluggish and tired. By the time I get home, I enjoy a meal heavy on the veggies with a small amount of protein and a grain of some sort. If that is considered a large meal-so be it. I like to go to bed sated.

In the piece Maxwell wrote recently in which he shared tips for a good night's sleep- eating light in the evening was among them. I agree with this, as I feel significantly worse in the morning if I ate a large meal or even a small one too close to bed time. Does anyone else wake up ravenous after eating a large meal the night before?

I'm usually in a ruch in the morning, so small breakfast. I usually eat lunch at my desk at work. Dinner is the time that I sit down with my familiy and reconnect after a long day. So, it is the biggest, nicest meal of of the day. If I lived in a place where everyone comes home and eats lunch together, I might think differently.

Yes. I cannot stomach the needed protein-based breakfast first thing, so I usually wait until 9 or 10 to eat that heavy breakfast (I will eat yogurt before then). Acid reflux prevents me from eating late so I tend to eat a salad from our container-grown foods or a small plate of beans - keeps my energy level up considerably. Also remember, many people mistake thirst for hunger. So drink lots of water.

The only time I skip or skimp on a meal is on the weekends, when oftentimes breakfast and lunch are combined. But that's only because I have the luxury of lazying about and eating a gigantic brunch over a long period of time. If I don't eat a decent breakfast, lunch, or dinner during the workweek, I become an absolute disaster and collapse around 8 PM. I have been busy at work before, sure, but I have never forgotten to eat a meal or limited my intake despite a low energy level just because it's supposed to be a small meal. Listening to my body is sometimes tricky, but often pays off.

I was under the impression that this whole thing is just a myth, since it takes longer than just a few minutes to digest food, so whether or not you exercise in the evening doesn't even factor in...?

So by the meal size according to activity logic we're supposed to set a timer and exercise exactly ten hours after a meal in order to never be fat? Is my body really so inefficient?

@melle Speaking for myself, I get an afternoon slump so I run in the afternoon or early evening. I've never seen the point in exercising in the morning. I do it mainly to curb my temper. Also - exercise is the fountain of youth. So it's important, but it does almost nothing for weight loss. You can run for 6 miles, and kill all the benefits by eating a single muffin. New studies show that weight gain is related to types of bacteria in the gut (this may be why people who eat yogurt are thinner), BPA in plastic and other pollutants, and what women eat during pregnancy.

http://www.newsweek.com/2010/12/10/what-fat-animals-tell-us-about-human-obesity.html

http://www.drsharma.ca/obesity-should-prevention-of-childhood-obesities-start-in-the-womb.html

I'm a university student living alone. My schedule is all over the place which means that I've stopped the whole breakfast-lunch-supper thing. I eat when I am hungry and how much I am hungry for. This usually means that I snack until late afternoon, have a large meal then, and then have a smaller meal late in the evening.

I'm studying abroad in Chile right now, and they have a tradition of quick breakfast, really big lunch, and then a meal called "onces" to replace dinner. The closest thing I could relate "onces" to is tea time: cucumber, tomato and avocado, bread, fruit and tea. It took some serious adjusting to cut down the size of dinner, but now it's kind of nice to not go to bed full!

My lunches and dinners are typically the same, so I guess I eat medium-sized meals twice a day. Breakfast is super light, unless I didn't sleep well and need extra energy.
I don't buy into the theory that eating a large dinner is bad for weight gain. Has anyone ever actually seen a study about this? And even if there was one, it would only prove a correlation, not causation. Studies involving diet should be taken with a grain of salt, and we should all take into account the heterogeneity of human beings. That is, what works for one person may not work for another.

Eating a late, heavy dinner (meat or fish and lots of fresh vegetables) tides us over for the whole of the next day. I don't feel any urge to snack on starchy, sugary foods at all.

since dinner is the only time hubby eats at home our dinner is huge one ,compared to the breakfast nd lunch

I have a bad habit of snacking a lot after dinner. The calorie range could go from 250 to even 700. It's really quite bad..

I NEED breakfast, especially since I usually exercise first thing in the morning (before breakfast). There are times that for whatever reason, I have no appetite in the morning, however. I know if all I have is a piece of toast, I'm setting myself up to have a bad day of snacking. Lunch tends to be at my desk, which is hardly ideal but difficult to change right now. And yes, I do tend to eat too much at dinner just for the comfort factor. I'm trying to switch to soups, lighter meals, and tisanes instead, but it's a big habit-change.

@yogurtceral: maybe you're having dinner too early or not enough calories at dinner? Assuming you're not vegetarian/vegan, you could increase the proportion of protein, which should fill you up for longer. For instance, try a larger serving of meat or fish, followed by a cheese course with nuts and fruit.

@pearmelon thanks or the advice. I have dinner around 7:30pm so it's not that early. I think I do need some more quality protein to fill me up more!