Few lifestyle choices involve more cultural issues than when to eat dinner. There’s a whole national stereotype that Americans are fast eaters, Italians are slow eaters, and Spaniards are even slower eaters. Enjoy an early dinner in the evening. A late dinner can be an event in itself.
But is there an optimal time to eat dinner from a health perspective? In a sense. Say what you absolutely want to do walter longoThe director of the University of Southern California’s Longevity Institute says to finish eating at least three hours before you plan to go to bed. For example, if your normal bedtime is midnight, your deadline is 9pm.
This is because eating too late can disrupt the circadian rhythms that govern how our bodies transition from day to night and back again. “If you push dinner later and later, the message to the system will be: [that] You should still be active,” says Longo. It can negatively impact your sleep (as can exposure to bright light before bed) and the efficiency with which you burn calories.
When you eat dinner determines the total fasting time from your last meal of the day to your first meal of the next day. This is the problem with time-restricted eating (a type of intermittent fasting in which all meals for the day are kept within 12 hours). adam collinsAssociate Professor of Nutrition at the University of Surrey. Extending the overnight fast between dinner and breakfast “forces your body to go into a more catabolic phase and shift toward fat oxidation. When you’re eating carbohydrates, you burn them; when you’re not, you burn them, and when you’re not, you burn fat.” You’re training your body to do what it was meant to do: burn it.” This helps with weight loss and has a general positive effect on metabolic health.
Does eating at restricted times mean having a later breakfast or an earlier dinner? The consensus seems to be that it can be done,” Collins said. “From a circadian rhythm perspective, that makes sense because people are ready to deal with food early in their active phase.”
According to Longo, the most common habit among centenarians is to have an early “light dinner” with 12 hours to spare before breakfast the next day. Reduce the amount of food you eat in the second half of the day sound It’s also healthy, at least if you believe in the old saying, “Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and supper like a pauper.”
This is not always realistic. “It’s very difficult to eat a big breakfast because you’re not hungry,” says Dr. Collins. Part of the reason is that when you wake up, your body “starts dumping glucose into your bloodstream” and your energy levels are already high. . And considering that many people eat sandwiches for lunch, how many of us have ever cooked a meal at the office? It’s inevitable that most people will get their calories in the evening. .
