A balanced and nutritious diet in combination with exercise or light physical activity is one of the best ways to lead a healthy life. However, is that all you need to be perfectly healthy? Well, you have to think again. There is one other factor that you are probably missing out on. We’re talking about meal timings here.
Your mealtime and the intervals between each meal are some of the most important things to consider in your health-boosting journey. Remember when you were in school, you enjoyed a lunch break, and each day you had to have lunch at the same time because the gong rang at the same time. It was just the kind of discipline that your body was asking for. So, why are meal timings important?
Body’s Cycle
Various nutritionists have said that our body expects us to behave in certain ways on the importance of meal timings. Through all the culmination of habits, our body falls into a cyclic rhythm.
So, we need the right nutrients, a disciplined sleep cycle, and a disciplined excreting pattern can all come together to ensure that we live healthily and stay healthy. Hence it is very important to stay consistent and disciplined with your meal timings.
Metabolism
The time you eat your food can determine how slow or fast your metabolism is. When you get up early in the morning, your metabolic health is at the highest, and if you are not fueling your body enough, you won’t be able to fire up your metabolic rate.
Hence the right meal timings can fire up your metabolic rate. As the day progresses, your metabolism slows down considerably. Hence it is important to fire up your metabolism and keep it running. That way, you can do the same by having an early dinner.
Detoxification
Detoxification is one of the things that happen. The liver is one of the key organs that enables detoxification. When you eat your food, a lot of metabolic functions start happening. Your meal timings can impact the detoxification process.
When you sleep during midnight, your liver carries the detoxification activity. If you do not cater to a specific mealtime. When you are eating too late, around 10 or 12 p.m, you may be affecting your liver. So, when you rest, your liver starts functioning. So, it is truly important to eat at the right time and sleep at the right time to enable a proper detoxification process.
The Ideal Gap Between Meals
The ideal gap between meals should not be more than 4 hours. Ideally, breakfast has to be the heaviest meal. The gap between your breakfast and lunch cannot exceed 4-5 hours. You need to have a gap of 4-5 hours between your two major meals because you can have a snack meal in between. If you start your breakfast at 9 am, you can sneak in a snack at around 11 and have your lunch at around 1 pm.
Between your lunch and dinner, you can keep a gap of four to five hours. Even if you have a late lunch, you can include a healthy evening snack. Late-night dinners are classic recipes for indigestion and sugar spike. The body has a clock of its own and functions accordingly. So, breakfast should ideally be within one hour of waking up. And you should wrap things up at least two hours before you go off to sleep.
We go without food, which helps in fat-burning and improves hormone regulation, impacting appetite, cravings, and blood sugar regulation. The earlier you eat, the better. For instance, a dinner as early as 6 p.m, when the sun sets instead of 8 p.m., can potentially impact weight loss as it aligns closer to the body’s internal clock. An early dinner can increase the block of time back.
The Other Positives
Eating at regular times has a positive effect on weight loss; it can also aid in effective digestion, help in effective removal of waste, all-important for maintaining optimal gut health. Also, when you eat at regular times each day, your body knows naturally when to expect food and produce the correct digestive enzymes for proper digestion.
The next time you are trying to get healthier, focus on the meal timings to get great results.