Changing My Families Eating Schedule

As easy way of making this happen is to simply split your meals in half, and hulk them out with a fruit or veg.
assume your current healthy diet includes-
breakfast- whole wheat english muffin + egg + cheese + grapefruit and berries, coffee and juice.
lunch- pastrami panini and a spinach salad
dinner- vegetarian chili and cornbread, salsa, guac and sour cream and a beer. fried icecream as a dessert.

eat half the egg and cheese with grapefruit and berries at 7, at 10 eat the other half, with a fruit or veg.
eat half the panini at noon and 1/2 again at 3.
eat your dinner at 6, followed with a small dessert.
at 8 you can have pound cake and tons of berries.

The extra fruit or veg is up to you. I like having mandarin oranges, mixed berries, bananas, carrot sticks, celery, spinach, red bell peppers, broccoli, tomatoes, cuccumbers etc to bulk out my half meals.

Good luck with this style of eating. I hope it works for you.
F. B.

I think one of the best things you can do to eat healthier without feeling deprived is to bulk up on the veges and cut the meat whenever possible. This works especially well with soups, stews, casseroles, stir frys, etc. Use half the amount of meat you normally would and add more peppers, onions, carrots, whatever. Also substitute leaner meat whenever possible. I absolutely hate ground turkey made into burgers but it works well for spicier foods, like tacos or enchiladas. Another trick as far as portion control is simply retraining your brain into what is considered "normal." I don't like buying prepackaged foods (because they're more expensive) but buying almonds, for example, in those 100 calorie packs really helped me adjust how much I was consuming at once. Having a sweet tooth I find it necessary to have something sweet every day. That doesn't need to be a big slice of chocolate cake, one or two chocolate kisses usually satisfies, as does a tablespoon of brown sugar in my oatmeal, or a single chocolate chip cookie :)

Cook the same.

Serve half.

Serve the other half 3 hours later.

I think people generally do it by calories. So if you want to eat 2000 calories a day you have breakfast of 400 calories. Then a snack of 200 calories. Lunch of 400 calories. Snack of 300 calories. Dinner of 500 calories. Snack of 200 calories.

Examples:
Breakfast: Egg, muffin, orange juice.
Snack: Yogurt with fruit.
Lunch: Chicken salad, crackers, bean salad, apple.
Snack: Carrots with PB
Dinner: Chicken, rice, broccoli, angel food cake
Snack: Banana, milk.

That totals approximately 2000 calories...broken down into several "meals."

I think a healthy snack should have 2 food groups.. milk and starch..(cracker pretzels etc) or fruit and yogurt..

when my kids were young.. we did morning snack, afternoon snack and bedtime snack.. becuase their tummies were small and they couldnt eat much at a time. now we rarely do snacks..

Here's what I heard you say.

I cook large meals and my family doesn't eat it all so I want to cook more meals.

I suggest you make a plan that goes by serving sizes. If you look at other countries they use smaller plates, smaller servings, and we use their serving platters for our meals.

A serving on chicken is small, it will fit in the palm or your hand. How much larger is your serving of chicken?

A serving of a veggie is 1/4 cup for little ones and 1/2 cup for adults. If you are having 2 veggies that is NOT 1/4 or 1/2 cup of each, it is 1/2 or 1/4 cup total that is the serving. It does not hurt to have that extra serving of a veggie but it does need to be counted in.

I think if you are cooking for your family and they are not eating all of it then you could cook the same things but make a bit less of it.

I make hamburger helper on the weekends. It's our big splurge.

My hubby eats a lot and the kids will too if the HB Helper is one they like and haven't had in a while. Our Walmart is horrible about getting the spaghetti one. So if I cook that kind I know that I need to make 3 boxes of it. With a 2 lb package of meat. I never use the entire meat they say. They also like the Tomato Basil Penne'.

If I serve green beans with some garlic powder sprinkled on and a bit of butter then some garlic bread I have more food than they can eat.

So if I plan ahead and make the added stuff I can get by with only cooking 2 boxes of hb helper with 1 -1 1/2 lb of hb meat.

Reading up on serving sizes and using smaller plates could be the first step towards cooking less foods and getting their tummies used to the idea of smaller servings filling them up.

We eat the same way you do, kids eat breakfast at school, they also eat lunch there, then we do a high protein snack with some good complex carbohydrates so it will carry them over until dinner especially if it's going to be a late night at the gym.

Then we do dinner. I add an evening snack though. I think the kids need something at night if they ate earlier. If they ate at 7 then they probably don't need something big but if they ate at 5:30 then at bedtime it's been over 3 hours and they need a little something or they'll be up during the night grazing.

Get two things - smaller plates and tupperware. You will eat less if you use a smaller plate and you will also be less inclined to eat it all if you pack the leftovers for another day (like lunch at the office). For snacks, consider kid-sized bowls (IKEA makes some great, inexpensive sets in fun colors) vs a vat of ice cream. One good scoop vs three. Eat slowly. Enjoy it. Portion it out and then put the rest AWAY so it's not easy to just have a few more chips.

Also, make the meals heavier on veg, and lay off the heavy butter or dressings or sauces. To be honest, many light varieties of dressing are as good or better than their full-fat counterparts. Lower fat cheese took some getting used to, but now we don't buy a lot of full fat cheeses (no fat melts funny, so we don't do no fat). Look at the meals and think about substitutes. There's a show called Cook Yourself Thin that has a lot of those kinds of suggestions. Skip the white bread for whole wheat. Use turkey bacon vs regular bacon. Before bed, consider something like fruit vs ice cream. If you go for lower calorie versions, you can still feel full on less.

Also, evaluate why you eat what you eat. Just tradition? Family comfort food? My DH eats sweets when he's stressed, so he's tried to manage his stress as part of his weight control. And the other thing we do is not buy it - if there are no chips, crackers, sodas in the house, then they won't be there to snack on.