Should Lunch Be Light or Heavy for Weight Loss?

We’ve all heard different stories when it comes to how you should portion the various meals you have throughout the day when you are trying to lose a few pounds. For instance, a long battled over belief is that you should eat a heavy breakfast. Supporters of this theory say that if you eat a heavy breakfast, it sets you off on the right path for not overeating at lunch and dinner because you haven’t under eaten.

On the other hand, some say that this is totally wrong because there is really no proof that eating a heavy breakfast (of course of healthy foods), has any impact on your overall calorie intake for the day. In fact, they say that eating a heavier breakfast may just lead to overall higher calorie intake for the day since you don’t really curb the rest of your meals as was once thought.

There are also similar arguments for and against eating heavier lunches vs. lighter lunches. I for one believe that my breakfast should be about a medium meal for me, my lunch should be a little larger, and my dinner should preferably be the smallest meal of the day since I don’t have much more left of my day after that.

It varies per person, but I’ve found that the above works best for me and my body chemistry and losing weight.  Now, there is some research that suggests that keeping your lunch time meal pretty light may have some benefits for losing weight. What I want to know is, how do you then stay full between lunch and dinner without a substantial snack?

Researchers basically looked at groups of people who ate “meal replacements” vs. a full lunch meal. They would eat something small and high in fiber, say an apple and a prepackaged inexpensive food item like yogurt, or a can of ravioli, or some other similar food (maybe a Lean Cuisine or something like that).

They found that these participants actually did not try to make up for under eating at lunch when it came to their dinner time. This is a real shocker to me, because for me personally, I think I do tend to “make up” for eating too little during the day at lunch time.

I consequently pack on too many calories right before bed time when I eat too light at lunch, and for me that’s a really bad scenario because I won’t be burning off any of those calories since we eat our dinner fairly late – between 7:30 and 8:00 usually.