If you’ve tried to starve yourself to drop pounds, you’ve probably been annoyed at the futility of counting calories. Because, it turns out, restricting your calorie consumption without changing the foods you eat and switching other lifestyle factors rarely keeps you slim.
A lab study at San Diego State University and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies shows that for better health and a better shot at keeping your weight under control, the time of day that you eat may be as important as what you eat, or even how much.
Now, the tests were performed on fruit flies. How, you ask, does that apply to humans? Well, fruit flies are genetically very similar to people. We share 50 percent of the same protein sequences, and over 60 percent of human diseases have analogues in fruit flies.
The fruit fly tests showed that when you limit eating to certain times of the day, you set into motion biological processes that slow aging, improve heart health and control body weight.
Genes linked to the body’s daily (circadian) rhythm play a key role in producing these benefits, although the precise physiological mechanism has not yet been explained.
Other studies have demonstrated that when you eat later in the afternoon and at night, you run a greater risk of heart disease and weight gain than folks who eat earlier and stop noshing after dinner.
“So what’s happening when people eat late?” asks researcher Girish Melkani who specializes in studying cardiovascular physiology. “They’re not changing their diet, just the time.”
In the tests, a group of flies that was only allowed to feed during the first half of the day were compared to flies that had round-the-clock access to food. After three weeks, the restricted flies gained less weight, had healthier hearts and even slept better than the flies that could eat any time even though both groups consumed similar amounts of food.
The results were so startling that the researchers repeated their study several times to convince themselves that the results were no accident.
If you think about it, it makes perfect sense that the human body was not designed to consume food after dark. We evolved to hunt during the day and rest at night. Before electric lights and all-night convenience stores, searching for food long after the sun went down was risky business.
Problem is that today, we do have access to all kinds of food at night. So how do you keep yourself from indulging?
A good idea to stop hunger at night is to eat foods with good fat in them and eat fewer grains – especially processed grains – for dinner. Grains have little if any usable protein, very few nutrients, and not much fat.
Fat, along with protein, carries micronutrients to your body. This signals the hormones that regulate hunger in your brain and body that you’ve eaten, and that you don’t need more food. [1]
Try to make protein with good fat in it – like grass-fed beef or cold-water fish, both of which are loaded with good fats and have few if any bad fats in them – the focus of your meal at night.
[1] Klok M, Jakobsdottir S, Drent M. “The role of leptin and ghrelin in the regulation of food intake and body weight in humans: a review.” Obes Rev. 2007 Jan;8(1):21-34.
