6 Benefits to Timing Your Meals

6 Benefits to Timing Your Meals

How often have we heard the phrase “timing is everything”? It has long been understood that what and how you eat affects your overall health. Recent research has been focusing on when you eat. The new term is metabolic switching, which is when the body goes into “fasting mode” and begins using body fat, as fuel. Metabolic switching or intermittent fasting, as it is sometimes called, slows the body’s use of insulin. Metabolic switching signals the body to activate maintenance and repairs systems, which helps with disease prevention. Can we try to “breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a pauper”

Eat breakfast within 2 hours of waking. You have slept off your night’s melatonin, allowing your insulin to take over your metabolism. Research suggests a breakfast including protein (30 grams), high fiber like oatmeal, low sugar may help control appetite and satiety to support weight control.

Sweets before 3:00 pm. It is proven that the body best processes carbohydrates and sugars in the morning  only until early afternoon. Keep sweets off an empty stomach, always eat with a meal of protein and fats. So, blueberry muffin for breakfast add a hard-boiled egg and fresh fruit.

Dial back on Dinner Hour. The evening meal should be finished before 8:00 pm.  As bedtime approaches your melatonin increases and insulin output declines. That means your blood sugar climbs and insulin is diminished, so the body cannot clear the sugars efficiently.

Slim down your supper. Your dinner should supply no more than 30% of your daily calories. Best way is to make dinner the healthiest meal of the day: vegetables, salads, fruits and high fiber. When you begin to make evening your healthiest meal it allows your earlier meals to process best, when your body (insulin supply) is primed for food processing.

Phase out evening snacks. No evening snacking allows us to decease our insulin resistance. Allowing our high glycemic resistance to happen, when it is needed most during the daytime hours.

Set your eating schedule. Maintaining regular meal times will promote better metabolism and heart health. If you limit your eating to 10-hour time frame a day, you can lose weight, have more energy and sleep better at night.

If you get the expected results of better sleep or at least 7 hours of sleep a night, by cutting down on when and what you eat after 3:00 pm you will feel healthier.  When your circadian rhythm is in swing the world and your life in it, are better.

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