What's a normal size meal for me? I'm 5" 8 and 9 1/2 stone?

Depends on your level of activity, metabolism, age. Even then, you’ll need to adjust it to fit your goals (gaining? losing? maintaining?)

Well, that depends on the size of your other meals (and drinks) you consume during the day.

Generally speaking, shoot for eating 2000 calories. How you divide this up is left to yourself, although the more veggies you can eat, the better (and they have very few calories, so you feel more full).

If you have a light breakfast (400 calories, two eggs and toast and a cup of coffee roughly), a medium lunch (500 calories, a tuna sandwich and water), and a heavy dinner (900 calories – a hamburger and fries/salad, a can of pop, and a few cookies), this is roughly 2000.

You could also do 6 snacks every 3 hours, about 330 calories each with water to drink. Or two meals at 900 with a soda to drink.

Realistically, the right sized meal for you is whatever you can eat SLOWLY before you are full. I say slowly because it takes time for your stomach to tell your brain you are full (10–20 minutes).

Of course, if you are still growing, your body will need more food. And your exact calorie requirement differs depending on your level of activity (if you’re a pro boxer, you are burning much more calories than a desk worker). Here’s a calorie estimater which will tell you approximately how many calories you need to eat each day. You don’t really need to care about the weight loss aspect of that, although it’s good to note that you lose weight by cutting out 3500 calories, and you gain weight by adding on that same amount.

@dynamicduo
No way is a tuna sandwich and water 500 calories. Link
A McDonald’s big mac meal is only around 600 calories.

@Myndecho—After all the information @dynamicduo was nice enough to provide, you say she’s wrong about the amount of calories a tuna sandwich contains?—
—Here you go- 2 slices of Arnold’s double fiber whole wheat bread = 200 calories
Hellman’s Mayo= 106 calories per tablespoon, and most people use twice that so 212. StarKist solid white albacore tuna= 75 calories a half can.
That’s 487 calories right there.—

What the heck measurement is stone? Is that in the United States?

You’re skinny. Eat whatever you fancy, and ice-cream afterwards.
Come back here when you’re 12 stone and we’ll tell you how to stop gaining weight.

@willbrawn I also thought he was American, but stone is UK measurement afaik. 1 stone=14 lb (so a bit over 6 kilos)

Thanks @elijahsuicide. My suggestions were simply estimates. It is up to each of us to research the food we eat, and the tuna sandwich you make at home is not the same as the tuna sandwich you’d find in a fast food place nor is it the same tuna sandwich as in your link (that one has only ONE piece of bread, not much of a sandwich in my mind!).

Trust me, a Big Mac meal, large sized, is not 600 calories. Hey, let’s go look at the actual facts from McD’s themselves (these numbers are from their nutrition site). The Big Mac itself is 540 calories!!! Large fries is another 500. Large Coke is 310. A grand total of 1350, thirteen hundred and fifty calories. Whereas you estimated it as being 600. Your estimate was more than 50% incorrect, and if you ate two large sized Big Mac meals a day thinking you were consuming only 1200 calories, you would really be putting on pounds each week.

A stone is a British measurement of weight and equals 14 lbs. When I was in France, many years ago, the public scales were in stones.

Make the tuna sandwich with lots of chopped carrots, cukes and celery and use a vinaigrette (heavy on the vinegar and light on the oil) instead of mayo.

@dynamicduo
Then I must have 4 to 5x what I should a day. I’ll have about four sandwiches for one meal.

@elijah Heh! You beat me to the punch, I was ready to post the same thing. Just goes to show how drastically people underestimate their caloric intake.

@Myndecho no.. it makes me think you don’t have enough info to know what you “should” be eating a day. If it’s enough calories to fuel your activities, and maintain a healthy weight, then that means whatever amount you’re eating is just right. :) Some people’s bodies are just furnaces with metabolisms that burn like crazy.

I had a friend who had to eat 6 times a day, about 500 calories a time, just to not be skeletal. He had no fat and no muscle. Everyone assumed he was too broke for food and would feed him, and he welcomed it… he was mostly broke BECAUSE of all the food he was eating. :) We used to joke about tapeworms….