- What you need to know about this new diet trend
- How to lose weight with chrono-nutrition
- Why the time you eat is so important, say experts
There’s a new diet trend in town…
And it’s called chrono-nutrition.
It’s based on the idea that losing weight and staying healthy is not only about the amount of food you eat, or the types of food you eat…
It’s also about WHEN you eat.
For example, you might recall that a few weeks back I wrote about how scientists have shown that eating your last meal at 3pm (then leaving food until the next morning) is good for your health.
In one study, it led to weight loss, lower belly fat and less inflammation.
Well, this kind of research is part of a growing interest in the way that your body’s internal clocks work.
(And there are MULTIPLE clocks working inside you, not just one.)
It appears that your inner clocks are highly sensitive and highly influential on many different areas of health…
Sleep, pain, weight gain, mood… you name it.
For example, it has been found that some people with rheumatoid arthritis experience a ‘daily rhythm’ where their pain and stiffness are worse at different times of day or night.
Back in 2016, it was discovered that our spinal discs have body clocks and when those clocks break down, people get more back pain.
There’s a microbiome body clock too, in which your gut bacteria activity changes across the day.
While one species of bacteria might be more rampant in the morning, another gets active at night.
This is why scientists, nutritionists and naturopaths alike are all becoming fascinated by these inner clocks.
Can we improve our health through better TIMING?
Well, in the case of appetite control, perhaps so…
Why the time you eat is so important
In the field of chrono-nutrition, evidence is pointing towards the evening being the least healthy time to eat.
And yet our modern society is pivoted around large meals in the evening and small, or no, meals first thing.
Stats show that in Northern European countries, 40% of daily energy intake is at dinner in the evening, compared to 18% at breakfast.
And there’s a steadily increasing trend for MORE energy intake in the evening, with less in the morning.
Particularly here in the UK.
But some experts at the cutting edge of chrono-nutrition believe that it should be the other way round.
If you want better control of weight you should consume more energy earlier in the day and less energy later in the day.
Now, you’d think that this was because of how quickly we burn calories in the morning, compared to the evening.
We’ve all heard that sleeping on a full stomach, for instance, leads to weight gain.
But a new study in the journal Cell Metabolism suggests that it’s more about how hungry we feel…
In the research, subjects spent one month having a huge breakfast that used up half their daily calories… followed by a smaller lunch and an even smaller evening meal.
These proportions were switched around in the next month, so they had a small breakfast, a bigger lunch and an even bigger evening meal.
(This is akin to how most Brits eat these days!)
Time for a big breakfast?
Researchers found that the timing of a big meal made no difference to how many calories were burned…
BUT there was a huge difference in appetite levels.
People who ate big breakfasts were less hungry during the day and could control their eating much better.
Professor Alexandra Johnstone said, “The studies suggest, for appetite control, the big breakfast was a winner. If you can start your day with a healthy big breakfast, you are more likely to maintain physical activity levels and maintain that control over appetite for the remainder of the day.”
In the study, the breakfasts included smoothies, yoghurts, eggs, sausages and mushrooms.
All classic Good Life Letter staples!
As you know, I’m not terribly keen on sugary, processed, carb-based cereals, nor piles of toast.
Personally, I find that eating things like eggs and mackerel for breakfast help me lose weight and keep me feeling fuller until lunchtime.
But precisely why big breakfasts lead to less hunger is not yet clear.
Professor Johnstone suggested that our reward systems were “more in tune for the first meal of the day” after we break the overnight fast.
Whatever the case, if you do suffer from a runaway appetite and intense hunger pangs during the day, you might want to give this system a go:
- Big breakfast.
- Smaller lunch.
- Even smaller dinner.
And if you wanted to give this an extra boost, have that small dinner early in the evening and give yourself 14 hours ‘til breakfast.
See what happens over the course of a month and monitor your weight and appetite levels at the same time.
The good thing about this is that you’re not starving yourself or depriving yourself of a balanced diet – you’re just playing with timings.
If it works for you, do write in and let me know!