Although the most important factor for weight loss is total caloric balance (calories in verses calories out), meal timing can also impact your results. For instance, if fat loss is your primary goal, your best bet is to eat the bulk of your calories earlier in the day, when you’re more active. Start with a good breakfast, and then gradually taper the size of each meal as the day wears on. Aim to eat every three hours, for a total of at least four meals a day. It’s a much better alternative to starving yourself until you get home and eat everything in sight. Besides to regulate blood-sugar levels, eating this way also lets you burn off more calories with minimal effort. By contrast, eating large meals in the day or evening, when many of us just tend to just sit around, increases the chances of those calories to be stored as fat.

It’s difficult to quantify how much a certain food a person can eat before it impacts results. Everyone’s metabolism is different: What’s too much for one person may be just right for another. What I can tell you is that it’s important to eat favorite foods every now and then so you don’t feel deprived in the long run. Usually, when people make up their minds to lose weight, they do so out of utter disgust. Hell-bent on making radical changes, they swear off the foods they believe contributed to their problem in the first place. Then, after weeks of feeling deprived, they binge. Afterward, thinking this one setback has somehow sabotaged their results, they allow it to snowball and end up right back where they started-- if not heavier. So you’re right to be wary of giving up your treats.