There's a good argument why you should have an early dinner

But there’s an equal, if not better, argument for enjoying your breakfast and early dinner.

Eat by design

Humans were created to be active and eat in the light and rest and fast in the dark. As the sun goes down, our melatonin rises, usually peaking a few hours before bedtime.

“This is a signal for our bodies to sleep and every time someone eats when melatonin is high, you tend to see worse metabolic reactions,” explains Sean Cain, an expert on circadian rhythms from Monash University. “This is part of the reason why there is more metabolic disease in shift workers who eat more at night and less during the day… We shouldn’t eat when we have high melatonin levels.”

Heilbronn adds that our bodies are better equipped to metabolize food in the morning.

“If you eat at 7 in the morning, the pancreas secretes more insulin, the cells are better able to take up glucose, you have a smaller glucose response than eating the exact same food at 7 p.m.,” he explains. “So it makes a lot of sense that early is better than late.”

While plausible, the evidence for eating early is not yet strong, Heilbronn stresses. However, new research is promising.

A study, published in Science in May 2022 found that when mice ate in a 12-hour window that coincided with the start of their most active time of day, they improved their health and increased their lifespan by 35 percent.

One retrospective analysis of more than 3000 people, published in 2020, showed that body weight and health outcomes were better among those who ate more in the morning. And although human studies have found that the cardiometabolic benefits of TRE are independent of weight loss, another recent study found that shifting our eating window to the morning can increase weight loss efforts.

Let your body decide

Professor Amanda Salis, a weight loss researcher at the University of Western Australia, said it was too early to say if eating in one particular routine was better than another.

“But one thing is certain: if eating at regular intervals helps a person avoid excess energy intake (i.e. kilojoules from food and drink) … then that is something that has been shown to be beneficial for health.”

That means that if you skip breakfast and then become so greedy that you end up eating junk food, then all the benefits of fasting will be lost. On the other hand, if skipping dinner makes you snack on chocolate or chips, then that might not be good for you either.

At any time of the day what we eat is important. As long as we pay attention to our diet, it’s up to us when and how we fast, suggests Salis.

“I hypothesize that the effect of not eating for a long time is stronger than the effect of eating at certain times of the day.”

Load

Sean Cain echoes the sentiment that fasting itself is important, but explains that the same period of fasting can affect people differently.

Among early birds, for example, melatonin typically begins to rise earlier in the evening and decline earlier in the morning. So people who naturally like to get up early and go to bed early may be better off eating breakfast and eating earlier, or skipping dinner altogether.

Night owls, who like to stay up late and wake up later, may be better off skipping breakfast and dinner, as their melatonin tends to peak at night and decline later in the day. Others fall somewhere in between, though we all might benefit from bringing dinner a bit forward as our bodies try to relax.

The good news, says Cain, is that dinner eaters are less likely to feel like eating early and early morning people are less likely to want to eat late, so we can guide our eating and fasting by aligning with our body’s cues.

“It really depends on people’s rhythms and in part their melatonin levels,” says Cain, who eats dinner at 6 p.m. and never eats later than 8 p.m. “I don’t think there is one answer to all of this.”

Maximize your health, relationships, fitness and nutrition with our Live Well newsletter. Get it in your inbox every Monday.

Need more motivation?

Useful articles to get you moving.

• From mastering your technique and preventing injury, to choosing the right fuel and gear, this five week guide will start your running journey or go further.
• It’s easy to find excuses to avoid exercising in cold weather. The trick is knowing how to motivate yourself and remove any obstacles by follow four steps.
• Find how exercise changes your body after a day, a week, a month, a year.

#good #argument #early #dinner