I think I'm suffering from information overload. In one article it says don't eat until you're hungry; in another it says if you don't eat enough you won't metabolize your food fast enough to lose. All this info is giving me a headache. A lot of times I notice that I am simply eating because it's breakfast time or because it's lunchtime even though I am not really hungry. I've been doing this because I've read you shouldn't skip meals. What is the correct answer please?

The information overload in this field is daunting, and I sympathize with your frustration. Part of the problem is that there is often a little truth buried in even some of the wackiest theories, making it difficult to simply characterize much information as wrong or right.

Regarding eating and the spacing of meals (or snacks), the basic concept is this: You want to keep your blood sugar even throughout the day so you don't have high peaks and low valleys of energy. Generally, you shouldn't go too long without eating because your body goes into a kind of "starvation" mode -- it thinks there's a famine, so it stores fat, and your metabolism slows down as a survival tactic. In addition, when you go a long time without eating you generally will eat anything that's put in front of you. Go seven hours without food, and most people will eat the basket that the bread comes in. For that reason alone it's not advisable to skip meals.

On the other hand, many people don't learn to respond to their body's internal cues and instead eat just because it's mealtime and there's food in front of them. In the ideal situation, you want to eat small meals (or feedings) fairly frequently (every three to four hours) throughout the day. Small meals keep you from being too full and tired, from eating more calories than you can use and from being on a blood-sugar roller coaster.

So the real answer is to learn to listen to your body, eat when you are hungry and not go too long (more than four hours or so) without food. For most people that means eating at mealtimes PLUS a couple of nutritious snacks during the day.

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