Any snackers out there?

So maybe I am the only one, but I have come to realize that I never really have 3 meals a day, but more like 10 snacks or so. I eat during breakfast and lunch and dinner, but normally it is something small and then I go back in like an hour or so for something else. Does any one do this?

Like for example breakfast will be toast and coffee and then an hour later I'll make an omelet, and then an hour later I'll have fruit or something..and the rest of the day is pretty similiar.

Is this bad, good?? Any thoughts? My calories are still at my maintanence intake, but I just spread everything out...

I am exactly like this!! I don't think it's a bad thing.. but very inconvenient for when I go to school...  I eat something small every hour or so. Like I'll have a small bowl of oatmeal for breakfast... then grab an apple two hours later... then at lunch grab a handful of baby carrots... half an hour later a kiwi... two hours later a can of tuna... etc.

sameeeee !!!!

 i love it little snacks make me feel heaps better!

I definitely eat like this! except not in small quanitities at the moment either lol

This is supposed to be better for you anyways, but it is inconvenient when I have classes or I'm busy and I'm never on the same schedule as anyone else. I can eat meals like lunch or dinner with people, but then if we go to the movies after I can't wait that long so i have to bring snacks. Or if i go out to dinner with friends, then we go out, again, i bring snacks.

But I think I'd rather deal with the inconvenience of having to carry food with me everywhere than only eating 3 meals a day.

I think constant grazing has plenty of downsides..... It's a lot easier to overeat if you're picking at things all the time and you can find that the nutritional balance of what you eat gets skewed due to the need for foods to be quick/instant.   If you don't have a particularly set schedule and you live alone you can probably get away with an irregular eating pattern but if you had a job for example or a family to cater for you might find that you need to change to eating more 'square meals'.

Try to get at least one good-sized meal a day....

Yea I don't really have a family to cater too, and I am a freelance journalist so as you can see I don't have hours per say!

So I guess I am just going to keep snacking healthy and see if maintainence stays around.

I do this too.  Partly because I get full quite easily and partly because seeing a ton of food on my plate makes me uneasy. I have set times where I know how much and what Im supposed to eat.  Im supposed to be gaining weight, so Im not sure if this is good for that, but if I dont know exactly what Im eating, I might forget to eat.  Its just easier for me this way because I dont feel stuffed all the time.  I dont really think theres any harm in it, I used to worry that it was weird, lol, but I guess lots of people do it.  I may need to adjust it a little though once school starts back up because I dont want to have to worry about getting enough to eat at the right times.  But for your lifestyle, I think it sounds fine:)

No snacking for me :(

One cookie tends to lead to another,and another.

Binge much? Lol

That said healthy snacks can help if im really hungry and cant wait until lunch.

Eh.  Inconvenient - for who really ?  I eat all day long!  There is no way I can fit a whole square meal in one sitting.  I have "snacks" (that would make a "square" meal) that are perfectly portable (anything can be made portable) and I just eat. Other people may not like it, however, if I am hungry, I eat.  Sometimes, other people don't like it and I am aware(considerate), so I try to fit it in when those people are not around or be mindful and not eat in front of those people.

Edit 08/24:  When grossly overweight, I ate three "square" (more like "oval") meals a day and dessert daily-when I was overweight!

I do the exact same thing!  It makes posting on the 'What did you eat today' threads difficult! haha

I usually pick 3 snacks, label them breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and the rest are just written as snacks.  So it looks kinda like this: breakfast, snack, snack, lunch, snack, dinner, snack, snack, snack, snack, snack, etc. =P

Oh well..but sometimes I do find it hard to eat and then just stop.  It's not hard to just not eat but once I grab one thing I want to keep going back!  I guess that's why this works for me!

i'm a constant snacker, which is easy for me because i work at home.

i find i like a wide variety of things to eat small portions of so my fiance looks at me kind of crazy when i have a spoonful of this and spoonful of that and spponful of this...

to demonstrate, my breakfast was

1/2 sliced peach, 1/2 cup pumpkin+soygurt+walnuts, 1 cup kashi go lean+flaxseed flakes with rice milk.

morning snacks
half a frozen banana with a spoonful of granola, rye cracker with peanutbutter

lunch is
1/2 cup slow cooked lentils, 1 cup mixed salad topped with radish kimchi, 1 red bean paste mochi, 1/2 cup sweet potato noodles mixed with sauteed nappa and zuchinni.

i make a bunch of stuff ahead of time and just serve myself a bit of this and that all week.  i think i learned how i like to eat from  going to buffets with my fiance.

imo the only draw back is that other people think i eat like a bird because i don't eat a lot when they want to go out for dinner at 7:00pm.

this is a good question.  is snacking vs. meals a "bad" thing.  i'd say it could be malaptive IF it serves to maintain fears about eating "too much."  eating little bites throughout the day means that you're having small portions of foods.  it could be the case that the portion size is a residual from the ED.  what comes up for you when you think about eating a "big" meal?  do you think the ED thoughts might emerge if you had a 500-600 calorie meal?  sometimes people with EDs get locked into this perception of themselves as being "small" eaters, so having "normal" portions (i.e., what other people eat) is incongruent with this small-eater mentality.  it many ways, i could see it perpetuating a sense of eating differently from other people, and in that regard it may be a safety signal for the ED.  it's like "if i don't eat big portions like other people, then i'll be able to stay thin." or "if i'm not eating as much as x, then i'm still ok."  do any of these thoughts ring true for you?  snacking also helps ease anxiety about eating the amount you're supposed to eat (i.e., hitting your caloric target) and still being hungry.  it's common for people with a history of EDs to have fears about their own hunger and sometimes eating small, frequent snacks allows them to quell this fear because they know they'll be able to have "more" soon.  again, does that ring true for you?

so snacking MAY be something to modify if it seems to perpetuate ED-like thoughts and behaviors.  only you have access to that information. 

 

laura916, I know this will be taken wrong in every way, however, I just need to say it.  I am not an ED, recovering or otherwise.  I choose to eat this "snacking" way, because it works for me.  What works for one may not work for another.   At my age, I find that eating throughout the day seems to keep my metabolism going.

laura916, do you eat three solid-square meals a day ?  Just a question, as I didn't read that you answered the OP's question, much rather started rambling on.  So, do you snack or what?  How do you eat ?

Edit 08/24: Apologies for being offending; I did not see this as an eating  impaired post or question.  I humbly digress now.

i snack thruout the day as well. and what laura916 said i do think rings true to me i eat little often to meet my calorie goal but i am trying to adjust to 3 square meals with a snack or 2... i do see the connection with it to my ED and it is something i need to get over. thank you for bringing it up and bringing my attention to it!

While what laura916 said may not be true for all (as many statements aren't) it still makes sense.  It actually describes how I feel and maybe the cause of my constant snacking.  I have an intense fear of being hungry but being at my calorie goal.  This leads to constant snacking AND saving calories until night time.  I get scared that if I eat too much early in the day I'll get hungry at night and won't be able to eat more later.

Also, I can never have a 'meal' over 300 calories or else I feel insanely guilty.  It's difficult for me to have high calorie meals and snacks...I realized that and knew it came from an ED history but I have yet to correct it.

I still don't see anything wrong with constant snacking, but sometimes the reasons behind it aren't the best.

I definitely do this too. Sometimes it worries me because I'm afraid I'm underestimating my calorie intake because constant grazing makes it difficult for me to count my calories.  I'm starting again tomorrow though, so hopefully I can get a handle on things now that there's a little more structure to my schedule with school starting back up.  I just don't even like to feel really full.  It puts me in a terrible mood.

Oh yes, I'm a definite snacker. I don't see anything wrong with it, it keeps your metabolism awake, but it's also just the most convenient for me right now. I love food, so I like the fact that I never have to wait too long to eat some haha =]

Another snacker here! Its all healthy. I think maybe some people think of snacking as frequent visits to the cookie jar or cracker box. For me its a handful of baby carrots, then a bit later I'll have some apple slices, then a bit later some fage greek yogurt. It's all strategically planned and rationed out so that I make sure to get a good nutritional balance throughout the day.

Eating like this keeps me from getting hungry and prevents me from overeating at my meals.

My breakfasts are my largest meal, and then I sort of taper out throughout the day with a small lunch and even smaller dinner.

i want to know........

to all above........ 

1.how long between your snacks

2.how many you have each day

3.how many calories in each???

This is actually good for your metabolism. It keeps it up and stable. Good For you!

I definitely do that, when I can. At work this summer, my schedule was perfectly oriented to my eating style: breakfast, morning break, lunch, afternoon break, after-work snack, dinner, after-dinner snack. At school it might be a little dicey-er, just because I have solid blocks of class and not a lot of free time. But whatever, profs don't care if you eat in class (usually) so I'm not too too worried about it. And as far as it being a holdover from my ED days, I definitely believe it could be. Pre-ED, when I was first at a normal weight, I would have breakfast, lunch, and dinner with a snack in the middle if I felt hungry. I would also snack mindlessly, while doing homework or reading or whatever. These days, I hate hate HATE the feeling of being really full, and do tend to sort of freak out if I have too many cals at once, even if I need them. So yeah, it may be a good system born from a flawed mentality, but I figure it's better than the alternative!