[oakenshield]

What you're speaking about seems similar to what most people on the Leangains [1] diet follow.

In looking around for healthy diet + exercise patterns for predominantly sedentary lifestyles (such as the HN crowd), there seem to be two main styles: (1) eat 6 small meals a day spaced out over your waking period, and (2) eat only 8 hours a day, and fast for 16, a form of intermittent fasting (IF) as is recommended by Leangains. Having tried both, I find that IF is vastly easier to adhere to, and more importantly, much easier to maintain your weight loss (or muscle gain) goals as you have only so much time in a day to stuff yourself.

In both schemes however, most of your calories are supposed to come post exercise. In my case, this is the traditional "dinner" time, but like the article says, for pre-electricity ages, this meal may very well have been around noon.

[1] http://examine.com/leangains-faq/#summary2

[Swizec]

Personally I've discovered that 5 small-ish meals spread out over the day works really well. It's a bit annoying because I have to eat every three hours, but I've dropped fat without dropping (even gaining) weight and feel much better than I used to.

And most importantly, I have constant energy levels throughout the day. With normal-sized meals there's no problems of being sleepy after a meel, just energetic, and the next meal comes sooner than an energy crash.

Also it's proven to be the only way I can get enough calories every day, especially those days when I have boxing practice ...

[CerealPie]

For those interested in leangains, I can't recommend Andy's site [1] enough. Lots of useful and easy to folloew information there.

Also, I created a simple macro calculator for leangains[2] just last week. It is not finished yet, but at least for me it is useable.

[1] http://rippedbody.jp/

[2] http://sareyko.net/leancalc/