Sport Dividing meals in half?

[DiscusJessie]

I'm probably making things more difficult than they need to be. I realize you're suppose to eat 6-8 smaller and more frequent meals a day. Would this basically work to divide meals like this?:

Say for lunch you have grilled chicken, some vegetables and rice and this is eaten at noon. Could you just take that same meal and eat half of it at 11:00am and then the second half of the meal around 2:00pm? Is this correct or how do people determine the 6-8 meals?

I'm in college and on campus from morning until late afternoon so I have to take my food with me. I can't get back to my house during the day. I usually just put my food in plastic containers. It would be really easy just to eat half and then eat the rest a few hours later. I run into the problem when I don't take enough food with me. I might end up doing well during the first part of the day, but then I may go 4-5 hours without eating. Especially during a full schedule.

Ugh, I don't know why I'm making this so difficult!

 

[malkore]

You want 5-7 meals/snacks during the day..pretty evenly divided.

You determine how much to eat at each meal by figuring out your caloric needs/goals.

To keep the math easy...assume a person needed 2,400 calories a day for their goal.
2,400 divided by 6 meals is 400 calories per meal. sugar/starch carbs and protein have 4 calories per gram of carbs. fat has 9 calores per gram. alcohol is 7 calories/gram. (Fiber has no calories to count).

how much protein, fat, and carbs you have just varies on your goals and needs. some people don't do well on a lot of carbs, others do. some can't handle higher protein...most can.

if our example person is a male, you can bet he wants 30-35g of protein at each meal, which is 120-130 calories.


I cannot say whether your case of 'splitting the chicken breast into two meals' is "ideal" or not just because not all chicken breasts are the same size. i've seen a single breast cook down and still be almost 8oz, while many food service chicken are small breasts of less than 4oz.
Thus, I weigh a lot of my protein.