What's Your Eating Schedule?

I find so many articles on how many times a person should eat daily and they fall into basically 2 categories:  Those that recommend eating little meals every 3-4 hours and those that recommend 3 meals a day.  I'm more for the "little meals" school of thought because I found that when I really listened to my body and ate only when I was hungry, it turned out that my body gets hungry every 3-4 hours.  My daily eating schedule looks something like this: breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, and then dinner.  My breakfast is always a 16 ounce serving of juice and my dinner majority of the time is another 16 ounce serving of juice.  Snacks mostly consist of nuts, crackers, and/or granola bars.  Lately, I've been my own version of a trail mix and mixing nuts with dark chocolate covered fruits.  I don't pack a lot for snacks; majority of the time, it's just 2-3 handfuls of whatever I feel like snacking on.

Although I am no dietician or nutritionist, I really feel snacking is necessary and good for the body.  The key things to think about when it comes to snacks are the content and the portion.  What I plan on snacking on and how much of it do I plan on eating are questions I normally ask myself when thinking about snacks.  Surprisingly, I stopped caring about how much calories are in a particular food ever since I found out half a cup of pistachios is almost the same amount of calories as an order of McDonald's medium-sized french fries.  Since I refrain from eating anything that's deep fried, my list of choices is narrowed and its easier for me to choose a snack.

I think the best thing to do before making a conscious decision to snack is to (1) listen to your body and see if you really are hungry and (2) to stop eating when you feel full.  Granted there's lots of environmental stimuli around us that can affect the way we think (ie. food commercials, people eating around you, etc.) so it'll take some time before you figure out what's your body's preferred eating schedule.  Trust me though, taking that time is definitely worth it.