In the olden days many people ate their main meal at lunch time. Now that the convention is to have the main meal in the evening, the time of the evening meal really matters.
If hunger for the evening meal occurs before the evening occurs, it is quite reasonable to have the meal earlier, eating the correct portions of the correct foods at the correct times if at all possible.
What if I had no control over the time or meal type?
If I know it is going to be late I try to have a small snack of raw vegetables and fruit. I think I would try to reach a compromise about the time of the evening meal if it was always at a late time.
What is not reasonable is to have damaging, high caloric snacks to alleviate the genuine hunger, and then later eating the evening meal as if no snack was previously eaten. This may please the cook but it will not assist the stomach to shrink.