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When to Eat
With the Metabolic Diet, when it's time to eat, it's time to eat; there are no set times. You eat when you're hungry. Some people on the diet will find themselves eating meals 3 times a day and supplementing this with snacks as needed. Occasionally, folks will sit down 5-6 times a day for a more formal meal. It's up to the individual, his schedule and his appetite.

Eat when you need to
But you have to eat when you need to. One of the biggest mistakes you can make with this diet when you're first starting out is skipping a meal. You'll miss one, get very hungry, blame it on the diet and suddenly make an emotional, foolish decision about dropping the diet. At the beginning of the diet, for the first 3-4 weeks, you've got to be very regimented about eating.

Have you ever noticed how children will eat at "odd" times? Unlike adults, who eat say at 7:00 a.m., noon and 6:00 p.m. every day whether they need to or not, children eat when they feel they need to. They may leave their plate full at lunch and be rummaging through the refrigerator 2 hours later.

It's more natural to eat when you are hungry. That's the way many people have found this diet to work best. We all have an instinctive voice that will tell us when to eat, and this voice can become very insistent. Listen to it and do what it says. You should try not to go longer than 3 hours without putting some calories in your body.

Keep in mind that your metabolic rate is lowest in the morning and rises gradually during the day until early evening. At that time, it begins to fall gradually until early morning. Your metabolic rate is highest between 4-8 p.m. Eating with this in mind can aid you in best burning calories but don't be misled. If you eat in the early evening, your body may still be metabolizing food when it begins to slow down and be far less efficient in burning calories.

Eating before you exercise
Also, when it comes to exercise, you should try not to eat 45-60 minutes before you begin a workout. You want all your energy devoted to training, not digesting food. This also maximizes your body's natural growth hormone release during your workout. Many athletes train in the morning before breakfast, and there's really no problem with this. The body's energy reserves are thus devoted to the exercise at hand and breakfast is put off until after exercising, when hormonal levels are better suited for using the food you eat for rebuilding muscle and decreasing body fat.

Although you shouldn't eat whole foods, some supplements, like APT's multi-formulation Exersol, can be used just prior to, during and immediately after training to enhance the anabolic effect of exercise.