Let me add a slightly different perspective. For my wife and me, the stages of eating look something like this:
youth -- little money. eat good meal at home maybe once a day, skip meals the rest of the day because rather spend what little money you have on something more exciting than food. always on the run keeps you slim and trim.
working adult with family at home -- more money but still have to be frugal. wife fixes food for kids who eat as we did above. light lunch on the run at work. late dinner often with wife alone as she fixed food earlier for kids who got home from school earlier. big city commute means maybe an hour each way in heavy traffic rush hours morning and evening.
working adult with kids grown and away from home -- wife and I both tired from 10- to 12-hour days at work/commute. breakfast at home something like juice, milk, toast, small piece of meat, lunch at work maybe sandwich and/or soup, dinner around 7 p.m., something easy she can fix because I have never liked to cook.
me retired, she working -- still same light breakfasts, light lunch if any, I take her to local restaurant for dinner because not fair she would have to cook while still working, and I don't like to cook.
both retired -- breakfast something like instant oatmeal (great for lowering cholesterol), thin slice of turkey, swig of OJ with vitamin pill and aspirin, then one meal of the day usually between 2 and 3 p.m. gets us out of the home and in social meal setting. favorite restaurants include Olde Country Buffet, Olive Garden, Outback, Macaroni Grill, and several local places.
We usually split portions because they're so large. Always have salad and meat, usually chicken or fish. Try to avoid much if any bread, beer, dessert, candy, or ice cream. Small helpings of rice, pasta, or potato. As many veggies as we want. One glass of red wine a day or equivalent, plus as much cranberry juice and water as we want.
We find it costs about the same or not much more to eat out splitting portions at reasonably priced restaurants as it does to buy groceries and fix similar meals at home for just the two of us. This is mostly at lunch prices, not dinner prices.
Walk at least a mile a day, usually more. Easy to keep that regimen when we occasionally travel out of town.
It's pretty healthy, keeps our weight fairly stable, doctor sanctioned, we feel pretty good with it.
But defnitely a major evolution as we've aged and learned a lot of lessons the hard way. I once thought I exercised enough to eat anything, and did for several years. I'd scarf down a LOT of candy, chips, beer, bread, burgers, and all that tasty stuff.
Wondered why I often had heartburn at night after eating a large bag of chips with dip right before bed!
Got into some of the bad eating habits with food as reward/compensation syndrome. Work pressure, kid pressure, family pressure, financial pressure, we've all been there sooner or later.
Takes forever to learn some lessons, and I'm still learning. Foraging habits have been an integral part of the journey. Supposedly chimps have 97% of human DNA, but I'm descended more from the omnivorous feeding habits of bears.
