Is Meal Timing the Secret to Health and Weight Loss?


While I believe that our focus should be on our health rather than the number on the scale, I also believe that when we feel better about ourselves, we tend to do more of the things that we should such as eat right, exercise and socialize with friends and family. Meal timing can be a great strategy in addition to a nutritious diet, to get the scale headed in the right direction again.
When trying to drop a few pounds, most of us look to what we are eating. We cut calories, try to eat more salad, avoid the junk food, but generally speaking people don’t take a look at when they are eating. Weight gain and weight loss is regulated by a fairly complex hormonal system involving cortisol, estrogen and insulin, but for the purpose of this blog post, I am going to simplify it, as best I can and just talk about the cycle of insulin.

Hormones

Weight gain occurs when the hormone insulin is triggered and tells our bodies to store fat. Insulin is triggered when we eat carbohydrates and protein (note that insulin release is not triggered by dietary fat).
Weight loss occurs when our bodies no longer have easy access to glycogen (this is sugar stored in our livers) so it will then turn to our fat stores. Free fatty acids are released from our fat stores (stomach, thighs, etc.) and used as energy.
This typically occurs when we are not eating, which for most people is when they are asleep at night and then ends once we eat breakfast. Our bodies then have a supply of glucose to use as fuel and no longer need to access our body fat to use as energy. If we eat more glucose than our bodies need, then insulin which regulates our blood glucose will tell our bodies to store it as fat so we can use it as energy later.
I’m sure that you can see the problem with this cycle. Unless the grocery stores all go on strike, there probably isn’t going to be a ‘later’.
The Good News
There is a way that we can use this information to manipulate our bodies into releasing and burning the fat we have stored that we really don’t want to be lugging around anymore!
Basically, we want to decrease the time in which we have insulin being released (our feeding window) and telling us to store fat and increase the amount of time in which our bodies are utilizing stored fat for energy (our fasting window). Yes, I said fasting! I have talked about intermittent fasting before and it’s benefits, but I’m going to talk about meal timing so I don’t scare you off.
There are a couple of ways to decrease your feeding window. You can delay breakfast in the morning, which works especially well for those people who don’t enjoy eating as soon as they get up, or you can stop eating in the evening. Or, if you’re really determined, you could do both. By having a smaller window in which you consume your meals and snacks during the day, you increase the window in which your body has the opportunity to burn fat.
I stumbled across this years ago when I was working on some home renovations. I was getting up early every morning and grabbing a coffee instead of my usual breakfast and going straight to work on our reno’s. I magically lost about 5 lbs in a week!
Some of you may really struggle with skipping breakfast due to hypoglycemia so you may have to do this gradually by eating breakfast 15 minutes later each day in order to reprogram your body. If you need to leave the house by a certain time, you can try taking a protein shake with you. It may take time but eventually your body will adjust. A strategy I used was to drink bulletproof coffee. This is black coffee with some fat such as butter or coconut oil blended in. This will give you some energy and suppress your appetite.
Others may find it really hard not to eat at night. Again, if you’re used to having a snack at 8 pm, have it at 7:45 instead and keep moving it up until you no longer need it. Or perhaps you just need a little square of dark chocolate after dinner. Go for it. Just keep it close to your meal time, then go brush your teeth and consider the kitchen closed for the night. Allow yourself some flavoured club soda or a cup of tea and keep yourself busy. Old habits are often hard to break and if your family is snacking in front of the TV beside you, it won’t be easy so you may need to find something else to occupy your time until your body adapts to its new eating schedule.
One final note, intermittent fasting/meal timing, is meant to be used as a strategy for weight loss, not as a rigid eating schedule. If you have a barbecue to go to on the weekend and they aren’t eating until 9 pm, don’t worry about it, enjoy! Life is meant to be joyful and spent with friends and let’s face it, most of our social events tend to involve food. If you have a history eating disorders or chronic health conditions, you should speak to your doctor before embarking on this way of eating, but overall, it’s just a matter of changing long ingrained eating habits that don’t always jive with our goals for healthier living.

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