the problem with daily calories....

I had a friend recently visit me. He had started using his bike to get to and from school. It was a fifteen mile round trip and a good part of it is up hill. He was a bit frustrated that in spite of his new daily bike ride he has not lost any weight. We talked about what he was eating, when he was my roommate he seemed to live off of hot dogs and chili. He told me that his diet was poor consisting of mostly Taco Bell. I told him that was his problem. Then he told me that is was usually his only meal all day long. It was probably around a two thousand calorie meal.
I did not know what to tell him two thousand calories is about what a person should be taking in right? Well I thought about it for a long time. I realized that it is a mistake to think about caloric intake in terms of a whole day. It is better to think about calories in terms of the next few hours. If someone skips breakfast and lunch then has a big dinner this confuses the body. See after not having the fuel it needs for the morning and afternoon the body may go into famine mode. Meaning that since there is no plentiful source of calories, it will automatically save the calories, this is bad because it gets stored as fat. Another down fall is that in the evening he will not do enough activity to use up two thousand calories, the excess calories will also become fat. My buddy was shooting himself in his own foot because of his poor diet. I now think of food in terms of the next few hours. When I need the extra fuel for swimming or wieghtlifitng I use a more generous portion of my daily intake. I try to divide up my daily calories for what I need. I always pack a snack when I go to the beach to restore glycogen and have fule for the walk home for example. So this way of thinking had helped me immensely to understand food and its proper consumption.