One German study showed that a dense, high-quality breakfast helps to lose excess weight. But the lack of breakfast, when a person goes to work on an empty stomach, leads to problems with the heart and blood vessels. Although this is only one study and there are opposite opinions. For example, many nutritionists say that the importance of breakfast is greatly overestimated. So how is it the case? What is the best time to eat? And how to distribute food for breakfast, lunch, and dinner in general?
The best time to eat on Breakfast
So, let’s start with breakfast. We must understand that we can pursue completely different goals:
- we can pursue the goal of losing weight
- or we can pursue the goal of gaining muscle mass
- or we can pursue the goal of simply being a healthy person and leading a healthy lifestyle.
Take, for example, weight loss. Scientists have researched this issue, and they concluded that an early hearty breakfast allows you to speed up your metabolism and help you lose excess weight. And they even calculated the ideal time to eat for breakfast – it’s 7:11 in the morning. Yes, yes, that’s such German accuracy.
But let’s say you don’t want to lose weight or have such a goal. And you, for example, are engaged in sports and want to improve your athletic performance and increase muscle mass. Here, too, a specific study was conducted, and scientists concluded that the level of cortisol reaches its peak at about the same 7 am. So if we want to save our muscle mass, we need to stop at this time, that is, to be awake by 7 am, waking up to start eating.
Further, German scientists have calculated the ideal time to eat for lunch if you are losing weight again – it is 12:38 of the day. This is the time when the sun is at the peak of its activity.
The best time to eat on Dinner
And as for dinner, there is also an accurate figure here. I like the German experimenters and researchers. They thought that the correct time to eat is 18:14. Of course, when we hear such fantastic accuracy, we think about how important it is to approach this matter to the minute. Well, of course, there are certain reservations in the same study. The fact that it is not just 18: 14, but it is the interval between six and half-past six, but this figure is 18: 14, it is derived mathematically, it is just the arithmetic mean of those people who have achieved the greatest changes.
But well, what about the food after 7, or after 8 pm? previously, there was a very strong belief among people that there is something in the evening after six and either after the family or after eight who, as they said, is not worth it. Because all this supposedly goes into fat and contributes to weight gain. is this the case? and yes and no
Dinner and Weight loss
If we lose weight, then the time of eating is secondary, and in the foreground, we will always have the total daily calorie content. It is the most important thing. If we want to lose weight, we drop the total calorie content during the day. And this will affect first of all. And how will we distribute it by the time of day? This is a matter of the second and third order.
But still, it’s worth making a reservation that if we shift our diet towards the evening, we don’t eat very much during the day, and our dinner is very satisfying. Then, to some extent, a little bit, but still there is a small effect, will contribute to an increase in the fat layer.
The fact is that by the evening, we have a little more insulin released than in the first half of the day. And it really will contribute a little more to fat deposition than if we ate the same amount of food in the morning.
I must again say that this effect is not dominant, it is there, but it is insignificant. that is, first of all, we must evaluate the total caloric content for the entire day. But approximate calculations show that if you eat the main meal at dinner. Then it’s like increasing the complete daily calorie content per apple. Therefore, this is a very simple and understandable image. If we like to eat after 8 and actively overeat, well, I like it well, continue. Just then, during the day, take down your total diet by about one apple. Whether it’s a lot or a little, well, in general, it’s probably not much.
Another reason
But there is another reason why you should not eat after 8 pm, and it is already much more important.
The thing is that if we eat late and eat just before going to bed. Then it is bad for our digestive processes and our recovery.
Yes, and yes, of course, we will eventually digest it. It will not go anywhere. And yes, we will ultimately fall asleep anyway. But the favorable conditions for digestion will not be very good, and the quality of sleep will also suffer because of this.
But here, many people will object. How so, for example, after a hearty lunch, you want to sleep? Or some people can’t even fall asleep until they have eaten enough for dinner. Some people even have a night fever when they get up at night to eat, calm down, and fall asleep. Indeed, after a plentiful meal against the background of the release of insulin, the parasympathetic nervous system is activated in us. The one that is responsible for digestion and at the same time relaxation of calming.
But the thing is that this is a temporary effect. Yes, about there for 1 hour we will calm down and want to lie down to rest. But the quality of sleep will worsen very much if we ate right before going to bed because the body will give too much strength to the digestive processes. The quality of sleep, I must say, is probably even more important than the amount of sleep.
And we all know about the quantity, but they talk less about the quality. And to be of high quality, it is necessary to eat 2-3 hours before bedtime and not to eat very heavy food. Do not eat a large amount of fat. a large number of products require serious resources for their splitting. It will include, for example, a red meat steak or a simpler pork kebab. It will take about 7 hours for the stomach to dissolve the pork kebab. And only after 7 hours will the food enter the intestines. It is very, very much.
Therefore, it should not be surprising that if we ate a hearty meal and fell asleep, we will fall asleep quickly and the following day, we will wake up broken as if we had not slept. We fell asleep quickly, and the sleep was not of high quality.
By the way, friends, would it be interesting for you to read an article on the topic of periodic fasting? Because they talk about intermittent fasting very often, they actively argue about it. Still, it gives something, or it does not give anything. Does it even make sense?
To find out more:
Interesting Links: The Influence of Meal Frequency and Timing on Health in Humans: The Role of Fasting