March 27, 2019
Eating large meals during mid-day helped one woman lose weight. Studies show the body digests food more easily during the day. From Reader’s Digest.
- “In addition to fasting at night, it’s beneficial to eat your main meal earlier in the day. In a 2013 study, Harvard’s Frank Scheer and Marta Garaulet of the University of Murcia in Spain analyzed 420 dieters at weight-loss clinics. Participants ate the same number of calories and were equally active, but those who had their main meal before 3 p.m. lost significantly more weight than those who ate later. “To find such big differences in weight loss with just a slight difference in meal timing is quite remarkable,” says Scheer.
- “Throughout evolution, daytime has been for nourishment and nighttime for fasting, and our organs have evolved accordingly. Digestive enzymes and hormones ebb and flow in a predictable pattern over the course of 24 hours, enabling the liver, intestines, and other digestive organs to function together as one well-oiled machine. Our modern world of late-night takeout and snack-filled pantries threatens to upend this calibrating role of food.”
- To many, the science of meal timing is nothing but common sense. Craig Weingard, a compliance manager at a financial firm, is an acolyte of a bodybuilding expert who for years has included nightly fasts among his recommendations. For the longest time, Weingard resisted. It seemed too painful to go to bed hungry. Finally, he tried it. “In a flash, my whole body changed. I literally can see it the next day when I look at my stomach if I didn’t eat after six,” he says. “Anything you eat after 6:15 p.m. becomes part of you.”
- “So what changed? Eating the biggest meal of the day around noon started to become a thing of the past when more Americans began working away from their homes and farms.
- Read More
From Prevention, I learned big dinners affect sleep:
- “I never realized that my dinners were having an effect on my sleep. I typically have dinner by 6 PM and don’t go to bed until about 10 PM, so I thought I was giving myself plenty of time to digest. But once I started eating lighter dinners, I started sleeping like a dream. Going to bed with just the tiniest edge of hunger meant there were no upset stomachs or feelings of overfullness to keep me awake.” Read more.
