DonutsNCoffee

Once again, I find myself disagreeing with Lindarella. When you eat always matters because the metabolism changes during the course of the day. It's at its highest when you wake up and slows down as the day progresses. This is why what you do right after waking up is so important. If you wait too long to eat breakfast, your metabolism will slow down. That's why you need to eat breakfast as soon as you wake up. The exception is if you're going to do cardio. In that case, do that first and wait 30-60 minutes after you're done before eating breakfast. For the rest of your day, the trick is to keep your metabolism from slowing down too much. This is why you should aim to eat a small meal every 3 hours. If you go more than 4 hours between meals, the metabolism will slow down.

I also disagree with the idea that a person can lose weight even if they have all their calories at once. The body doesn't think in terms of calories per day, it worries more about calories per meal. It's not as if at the end of the day, the body totals up all the calories you ate and decides whether to gain or lose weight. If my body requires 2000 calories per day and I eat nothing but an 1800 calorie pizza for lunch, I will still gain weight. I know because I've done this. The body just cannot use that many calories at once.

As for the caveman comparison, I think it's a poor one. Cavemen were much more physically active whereas the average person today sits at a desk. Caveman ate all natural foods whereas a lot of our foods our processed. So it isn't simply about calories in vs. calories out. Sorry, but it's much more complex than that. If you boil it down to such a simple formula, sure you'll lose WEIGHT, but it could be muscle along with fat.

swoosh, given your schedule, what I would recommend is the following: You wake up at 11:00. You can either do cardio or eat breakfast. If you don't do cardio, then your meals would be at 11, 2, 5, 8, and 11. Now if you did 30 minutes of cardio, then waited 30 minutes before eating breakfast, your meals would be at 12, 3, 6, 9, and 12. The problem with not eating after 9 is that you spend 5 waking hours without any food. Given how late you stay up, it's safe for you to eat after 9. But notice how in both schedules I gave, your last meal is still 2-3 hours before bedtime.