Meal timings affect your waistline | Hacker News Reader

Meal timings affect your waistline

bbc.com

29 pointsprostoalex9 comments

Though it does briefly mention it at the end, one detail I'm uncertain about with this and where they mention intermittent fasting is how much the times of days matter? Some basic posts I've read about IF essentially say that they simply don't eat until 12pm and stop at 6-8pm. But this article seems to suggest that it would be much better if they ate at 8am and stopped at 3-5pm instead?

If that's the case, that leads me to wonder if your body wants you to adjust throughout the year. Like when the sun comes up earlier, should the feast change from 6am to 1-3pm instead? Or does that adjustment not really matter?

No scientific evidence, but I suspect that timing relative to sleep is more important than timing relative to sunrise.

Many people report that they’re simply not hungry until 2-3 hours after they wake up (once they’ve broken the habit of eating breakfast every day). I’m the same - even if go to bed hungry, I don’t really want to eat around 11am at the earliest (waking up around 7:30am).

Given how closely tied hormone release is to sleep, this wouldn’t be surprising. If anyone has any further reading, I’d appreciate links.

The research on this is still at early stages and hardly definitive, but it does seem to indicate slight preference for eTRF (early time-restricted feeding)

https://blog.mycircadianclock.org/early-time-restricted-feed...

> Compared to the control 12-hour schedule, eTRF decreased fasting insulin, as well as the overall level of insulin during an oral glucose tolerance test. This test demonstrated that eTRF led to improvements in both insulin sensitivity and β-cell responsiveness, the latter being an important indicator of pancreatic function. The other notable benefit observed with the eTRF schedule was a significant decline in systolic and diastolic blood pressure.

I think the eating late thing is due to social circumstances. Now that I no longer eat outside my home I should try eating breakfast instead of dinner and measure the results.

I definitely agree with this. I think this is one of the hardest parts of doing IF. Removing the typical dinner for me personally would be a big change, let alone trying to explain to my partner, family, and friends.

Early feeding is probably better than later feeding. This video covers some of the evidence:

https://youtu.be/1cAhfZa1Rac

Many of the negative health effects for shift workers are caused by the different timing mechanisms in the body that are affected by circadian rhythms being out of sync. For example, some systems will adjust to being asleep in the day, where others (like the liver) have less flexibility. One might imagine that when we eat would also matter in this context, since bedsides light exposure, access to food is notable for an effect on the circadian system. Evolutionarily, humans would have done far less eating in the dark, and we tend to stay up after dark on the regular, but our digestive and regulatory systems may not be staying up with us.

Tangentially related: meal timings are also super important if you're looking to bulk up. Muscles "grow" in a process called muscle protein synthesis (MPS), which is triggered (rather, increased significantly) after eating a protein-rich (30-50g) meal. But after triggering MPS and once the cycle is complete, MPS cannot be re-activated for a period of 3ish hours -- so it's a bad idea to chug a protein shake directly after your workout, then go home and eat a big meal an hour later. Further reading: https://fitstra.com/nutrition-fueling-for-fitness/#mtmiq

My current diet is:

* Run a modest calorific deficit with plenty of moderate exercise.

* Optimise food intake for reasonably stable blood sugar levels.

Goes against the current orthodoxy of keto or intermittent fasting#, but so far, so good. Main thing is that high or low blood sugar swings can lead to hunger pangs or sluggishness, this seems to predict excess eating.

# so I've named this diet 'The Unpopular Diet'... :-)

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