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Eating On A Schedule

For this first part of our series on food and eating, we will be looking at what I consider to be the absolutely essential prerequisite to any healthy eating plan - eating three or more meals a day, and eating them on a schedule. Only by becoming mindful of what we eat and when we eat it can we hope to make real, lasting changes in our eating habits and our relationship to food.

I am amazed by the number of people who can run a business, but cannot take adequate care of themselves. They organize and coordinate the efforts of dozens or hundreds of people, respond quickly to business crises, create and implement long-term plans, schedule their phone calls weeks in advance, and yet can’t remember to eat breakfast. There really is no excuse for this.

Morning is the time that we most need to eat. It has probably been somewhere between eight and twelve hours since we last ate, and our bodies are in serious need of refueling. As a matter of fact, the Mount Sinai School of Medicine lists skipping breakfast as the number one behavior detrimental to long-term health, ahead of smoking!

The wisest advice about breakfast is Breakfast like a king, Lunch like a prince, and Dinner like a pauper. It really should be the largest and most important meal of the day. As I said earlier, there really is no excuse for not scheduling time to eat a sit down breakfast at home, every single day, before you get started on anything else. If you do this for a couple of months, you will discover that you are somehow more able to deal with the day; your stress levels go down, your mental acuity improves and you will accomplish more in an average day.

Of course, eating lunch and dinner on a schedule are also important. I aim to achieve the following every day:

• Breakfast: 6 am
• Lunch: Noon
• Dinner: 7 pm

Of course, this is determined mostly by my sleep schedule, and works hand in hand with it to provide a rhythm and structure to my days. By developing this framework, not only have I created a way to work on improving my relationship to food, I have started to tame the chaos that was my daily life and give structure to it, which has its own host of stress-reducing benefits.

Give it a try. I think you’ll find that, over time, simply eating on a regular schedule and spreading your eating out throughout your day will completely change the way you deal with your food.

Next Week: Variety Is The Spice Of Life

Read the rest of this series:

• Part 1 - Scheduling
• Part 2 - Variety
• Part 3 - Moderation
• Part 4 - Being Picky
• Part 5 - Can The Canned Goods
• Part 6 - Get Your Kitchen In Order
• Part 7 - Think Like A Chef
• Part 8 - Technique
• Part 9 - Mise en Place