Happy 2019 to you! With every new year brings hope, determination, and a new beginning to working towards bettering yourself. January is also the time in which many are determined to lose those extra pounds gained during the holiday season through increased physical activity or by following a strict diet plan. Often times we get so caught up in just focusing on the quality and quantity of food yet ignore a very crucial piece of the equation the “when.”
The timing and frequency of our meals throughout the day can have a real baring on fat loss, energy, physical performance, and sleep. The contemporary pattern of eating is anywhere from 3-5 meals per day, often times not eating until later in the day up until just before bedtime. Now, you might be asking, what’s wrong with this way of eating?
Let’s step back for a moment, up until about 12,500 years ago when humans invented agriculture, finding food was unpredictable and hard to come by. Our ancestors would wake to the first rays of sunlight after fasting for 12-14 hours the night before, hunt and forage for food for hours. They would eat when food was available and spend much of the day being physically active. At night they would wind down for the evening go to sleep and start all over again. They operated with the circadian rhythm of the planet. Even when agriculture was introduced making food secure and abundant, the agrarian lifestyle still maintained a natural light/dark rhythm for thousands of years. The light bulb wasn’t invented until just 140 years ago. Without lighting, it was early to bed, early to rise accompanied by farming chores and walking miles every day. Obesity didn’t become a major issue until farming became mechanized and people left the fields to work in towns and cities.
In 2012, a research scientist by the name of Satchidananda Panda PhD lead a study comparing two groups of mice fed a poor quality, high fat diet mimicking a typical American Diet. Both groups received the same number of calories, one group ate whenever they wanted over 24 hours and another group ate only during an 8-hour window in sync with their circadian rhythms. The results were remarkable. The mice that ate without time restrictions became overweight and diabetic. The restricted group gained no weight and experienced no metabolic problems.
In a longer 38-week follow up study Panda compared two groups of mice: 24-hour access to food and 9-12-hour restriction to food. Those mice who were able to eat around the clock became obese and metabolically ill, whereas the time restricted group was lean and healthy, even during the study they were allowed “weekend cheats” outside of that window. It gets better, because halfway through the study the unrestrained eaters were switched to a restricted 9-12-hour window. They immediately began to shed weight they had gained from the first half of the study.
When humans enter a non-feeding state an intricate process of regeneration and repair begins on a cellular level peaking at about 12 hours of fasting. The removal of old and dysfunctional cellular debris and toxins aids in optimal health by reducing excess body fat; lowering levels of insulin and blood sugar; as well as protecting against stroke and cognitive decline.
Panda conducted another smaller scale study in which 8 healthy, but moderately overweight people (BMI 25-30) adjusted their feeding time from 14-15 hours per day down to 10 hours. They ate their normal diet and didn’t change their exercise habits. Over the course of 16 weeks they shed 4% body weight, improved energy, and sleep quality.
This year in addition to increasing physical activity and making healthier choices why not also take an objective look at your feeding schedule over the course of the day? Could you start to sync your eating behavior with light/dark cycles by eating breakfast at 7 am and finishing your last meal before 7 pm at night? The key is to eat more calories during the daylight hours and stop late night eating as this interferes with glycogen depletion, ketone-body generation, cellular repair, and metabolic resets. Give the strategy of 12 hours of non-feeding a try for several months and see what it can do for you!
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