I've tried everything and it is best for me.

It varies, because I'm usually not enough of a morning person to do breakfast and still get anything else done on time. So for most of my life I've been completely dependent on external factors if breakfast is going to happen, due to a lifetime of chronic tardiness.

I can create the illusion of normalcy if I have a day or two that I can force myself to do absolutely nothing but sleep, then I can abruptly do breakfast just like normal people. But rising so early comes with a high price. I can't sustain it for more than a couple of days, unless there's a pretty rigid structure around me to keep me synchronized.

Naturally I will revert to night owl really fast, where having to interface with the normal world there's never time for breakfast - I have to pre-shower the night before and lay everything out, pre-load everything in the vehicle, because I'm going to be in such a morning stupor that I'm incredibly cognitively impaired, so everything has to run on autopilot.

For the past couple of months, the virus impact has really shone a spotlight on just how unmoored from the tyranny of the clock I can become in only a couple of days.

Or a better way to describe it is a lifetime of "chronic social jet lag" where from the moment I'm awake I'm frantically running behind and trying to catch up, then effectively no productivity until at least noon.

Instead of the tyranny of the clock, though, the oppressive heat has been the terrible master. And thus I'd sleep all day long under the a/c while it's too hot out to be productive anyway, and get my most productive stuff done on the "graveyard shift".

And so I'd eat breakfast again for the first time in years, usually closer to 7 or 8 PM, and be fully awake and alert finally by about 9 to 10 PM, since I don't have to (normally) race the clock like a hamster running frantically in a cage.

Without a hard deadline to beat the clock, I've found I have far less stress, etc. but also eating schedules have gotten a little less structured as well.

So I'll sometimes fix bacon and eggs at, say, 9 to 11 PM and call that breakfast, since if it takes me till midnight to really start the day, that's fine when the afternoon high was 115 degrees f and by then it's fallen to 80.

then lunch might be about 4:30 AM give or take a while - whenever I'd feel hungry or have a good stopping point that is logical, then I might skip dinner entirely as I sleep best on an empty stomach.

So the routine pre-pandemic was often - skip breakfast because of the time squeeze, and either snack on things stashed at the office to start slowly catching up to the clock, and really pig out for lunch, and I'd finally have gotten productive momentum about the time most people are ending their day.

Such has always been the plight of the night owl. Stuck in Central Time (UTC-5) but one's body functioning at the time zone just this side of the International Date Line.

Good. I think as we get older we kind of settle into the foods that work best for us.

We are forced into what is considered normal schedules by work and school schedules.  But if left to their own devices, some people are naturally morning people and some are naturally night people. It sounds like you know what works best for you.

Definitely! I like to read cookbooks and try out various recipes. I have taught myself to love things I had once avoided, like beans and rice. I realized that I loved the food I had avoided but disliked the way all my relatives cooked it. I can now cook in several languages without a cookbook and enjoy every last bite.

We’ve talked about that before. Ethnic cuisine can be delicious and adventurous.

Maybe our nation would have fewer obese families if they ate the food of their ancestors?

Showtalk said:

We are forced into what is considered normal schedules by work and school schedules. But if left to their own devices, some people are naturally morning people and some are naturally night people.

And chronic sleep deprivation is a very common problem in the industrialized world.

Every spring when we go on daylight saving time, traffic accidents, industrial accidents, heart attacks, strokes, all sorts of errors like incorrect orders placed or filled, all spike that Monday and take about 2 weeks to normalize to pre-time change levels.

Obesity is caused by a number of factors.  I know a very wonderful lady who had stomach surgery because she could not control her weight.  It’s a combination of genetics and lifestyle habits.  Diet, exercise, and even medications can alter weight.

"Diet" is the keyword. Very few people know how to cook and eat from scratch. They also rely on convenience foods too much. Those foods have a lot of chemicals. At the Greek Festival I would never see obese members, especially the ones who helped make the meals, complete with pastry. I later became friends with one in her 90's who told me how she cooked. She was a food demo at a famous store but rarely bought what she demoed.