Late night meals limit weight loss
Does it matter what time of day you eat meals if you are trying to lose weight? Until recently, dieticians encouraged dieters to concentrate on the number of calories consumed, no matter what the time of day. New research, however, is showing distinct differences in the effect of consuming heavy meals in the morning or evening.
When you eat matters to weight gain, researchers found. Under strict laboratory conditions, which were controlled for sleep and exercise times, and exactly comparable meal content, obese study participants gained more weight if they ate later in the day, or right before bedtime. Although more research is needed under more “real-world” conditions, researchers are confident that the daily meal schedule is an important tool in weight loss programs: eat your calories early in the day, they advise.
Eating later in the day seems to alter participants’ metabolism. They burned fewer calories and reported feeling hungrier before meals than those on the earlier meal schedule, and over the course of the study, showed greater weight gain. Eating most of the day’s calories at breakfast and lunch resulted in physiological changes that helped to promote weight loss and limit weight gain.
Intermittent fasting
These results are important for all of us, but especially for people who are using an intermittent fasting, or “time restricted eating” method of weight control. The most common pattern is to set an 8-hour period in which all calories are consumed and to extend the fasting period (normally sleeping hours) to a total of 16 hours. This method is beginning to gain some effectiveness data, and has been found useful for many people, by reducing cholesterol, controlling blood sugar levels, and changing body composition by reducing waist circumference and visceral fat.
It appears, therefore, that circadian rhythms are very important to obesity and weight control. Eating needs to be a daytime activity, and any time restrictions put in place have to take daily rhythms into account and limit heavy meals in the evening and at night.
An organized daily schedule including work and rest periods as well as exercise and meal planning is an important discipline for maintaining both mental and physical health. It may not be easy, but the effort taken to get into healthy habits will pay off for the rest of your (long) life.