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Best Times to Eat, Including How Often for Weight Loss

By Edwina Clark, MS, RD, CSSD

June 7, 2026

What are the best times to eat? And how often should you eat? It’s a very simple question that I hear many people ask (especially those who want to lose some weight but it also comes from people who want to put on muscle), but a more complex answer is required.

It’s complicated because many people don’t, for example, eat breakfast and wonder if that’s a wise move. Others aren’t sure if snacks are a good idea. Some like to eat late and want to know if that’s messing with their goals.

We dig into all of those questions and more below, including suggesting the best type of eating schedule and why. Here are the best times to eat alongside tips for the most productive and healthful eating habits.

1. Generally, don’t skip breakfast

There are many people who don’t eat breakfast, either because they’re “intermittent fasting,” don’t like breakfast or think they’re too busy. But in general, breakfast skipping is associated with obesity and weight gain — most likely because it interferes with hormonal signals (including leptin) that regulate appetite and energy balance.

Skipping breakfast also negatively affects gut microbiota, contributing to excess inflammation and negative metabolic impacts. To make it worse, negative impacts to cognition and mood and impaired athletic performance are also more common among breakfast skippers.

In contrast, emerging studies (highlighted in a 2025 study entitled “Skipping breakfast and its wide-ranging health consequences”) indicate that breakfast consumption plays a role in bone mineral density. Prolonged fasting periods may affect calcium metabolism and skeletal health.

For most people, skipping breakfast doesn’t set you up for a healthy day, as you then often consume most of your calories in the latter half of the day. This is not helpful for weight loss goals but also poses certain health risks (see below).

2. Front load your day

While there isn’t a hard and fast rule, front-loading your day seems to be ideal while back-loading your day is associated with a variety of health issues. A 2022 Advances in Nutrition study about the timing and nutritional composition of food intake discusses how they can result in differing health outcomes.

Morning-loaded eating patterns lead to stronger postprandial ghrelin (hunger hormone) suppression, enhanced satiety hormone responses and greater weight loss compared to evening-loaded ones, even with similar caloric intake.

3. Consider having a mid-morning and mid-afternoon snack

In some corners of the internet (and the world), snacking is demonized. But just like skipping breakfast can lead to overeating and a less than healthy eating pattern, the same can happen when snack time is avoided.

For most people, having a mid-morning snack and mid-afternoon snack helps regulate your appetite. If your goal is to lose weight, this type of regulation is critical. It’s also important to keep the snack under 200 calories and make sure it contains protein and little added sugar.

If you’re an athlete or trying to build muscle, these snacks are critical for muscle recovery, energy replenishment and muscle building.

4. Don’t eat late at night

Many people eat too little throughout the day and end up overeating at night because of hunger, exhaustion and habit. Shifting your intake to a front-loaded pattern (see above) takes time and practice.

Stacking calories later in the day is associated with multiple poor health outcomes, including higher triglycerides, lower HDL, higher insulin levels, higher heart rate and higher epinephrine (adrenalin) levels.

A heavy meal prior to bed can also interfere with sleep and is not recommended. Conversely, consuming high protein foods, low-glycemic-index carbohydrates, and fruits that are rich in sleep-promoting properties and antioxidants like cherries and kiwis throughout the day promote sleep.

A final reason to shift away from late-night eating is because late-night calories possibly get stored as fat more easily. While it’s clear that back-loading your calories is detrimental to health, exactly why this happens is still being investigated. Changes in hunger and appetite hormones, glucose tolerance and other metabolic pathways such as fat metabolism are likely culprits.

5. Stick to an eating schedule with nutrition principles

A standard eating schedule is a good idea to implement. Namely, the schedule should feature the following:

• Three meals and two snacks

• Breakfast should be your largest meal, and dinner the smallest

• Snacks should have 10 to 30 grams of protein

• People don’t have trouble getting their carbohydrates, but you also need to have your 1) protein, 2) fiber and 3) healthy fats in your meals and snacks

Three nutrients that move slowly through your digestive tract and can help blunt the rise in blood sugar? The first one is protein, which also helps with muscle building and maintaining muscle. The second is fiber, of which most of us don't get enough of. The third is healthy fats.

These three dietary components can help you stay fuller for longer and regulate appetite.

If you’re seeking to gain muscle, then it’s very helpful to eat those five times a day with plenty of protein (around 30 grams) at each stop. It’s good to spread out your protein intake because your body's constantly going through protein.

6. Don’t graze — instead, eat every 2 to 4 hours

Alongside that healthier eating schedule, grazing is not a sound way to eat. While it may modestly increase energy burn, that may be offset by the extra calories consumed. After all, the thermic effect of food (calories required to metabolize food) is relatively small.

When you graze constantly, the migrating motor complex in the gut can’t take place, and this is important for sweeping away undigested food, bacteria and debris. A growing body of evidence suggests that the gut microbiome plays a role in weight management, and grazing too often may potentially impact microbial balance and energy metabolism.

So I wouldn't necessarily recommend a grazing pattern. You never really get satisfied, and it's really easy to overeat, as it becomes very challenging to know how much you're eating.

Instead, eat every 2 to 4 hours. It's about 3 hours for most people. For example, have breakfast at 7 a.m., a snack at 10 a.m., lunch at 12:30 p.m., a snack at 3 p.m. and dinner at 6 p.m.

7. Meal prep

If you think about it, you may find it easier to eat a healthy breakfast because it’s such an uncomplicated meal. Snacks, lunch and especially dinner get more complicated as the day goes on if we’re trying to make something flavorful but also with the protein, fiber and healthy fats that I discussed above.

This partly occurs because we get fatigued as the day goes on, and then hunger also enters the fray. Before we know it, we’re making bad decisions about what we’re eating and how much.

Instead, prepare ahead of time by meal prepping that lunch and dinner and even those snacks. At the very least, know what you’re going to eat at those meal times and try to stick to it.

8. Eat before and after exercising

Not eating before or after exercising is common, but it may not only lower the quality of your workouts but also negatively impact your recovery and fitness goals, including weight loss, muscle gain and more.

For example, pre-workout meals/snacks are important for both cardio and strength workouts, especially those engaged in long, intense training sessions. Studies suggest that consuming carbohydrate or protein and carbohydrate prior to resistance training can help maintain muscle glycogen and improve muscle protein synthesis.

If you like to do your cardio fasted, I ask that you reconsider. Fasted cardio has not been shown to be superior for weight loss, although fat oxidation increases when you exercise in a fasted state. Some evidence indicates that exercising fasted may impede physical performance, limit exercise intensity and possibly reduce total energy burned.

Now, after a workout, it’s also a good idea to take in some food. The sooner you have that post-workout meal, the sooner muscle protein synthesis and glycogen recovery can begin!

It’s especially critical to eat after a long, hard workout, as your blood sugar has tanked and you’re running low on glycogen.

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Edwina Clark, RD, is a registered dietitian, foodie and fitness-junkie on a mission to help others lead healthy and happy lives. Her clinical training experience includes weight management, diabetes, gut health, allergies and sports nutrition. Now based in Alexandria, Virginia, this proud Australian has over a decade of experience bringing evidence-based health and wellness products to market. Edwina is an Ancient Nutrition paid partner and part of Ancient Nutrition's Wellness Roundtable.