March is National Nutrition Month!
Spring is right around the corner, so it’s a great time of year to learn new habits to get in shape and stay healthy. And today marks the start of Daylight Saving Time, so you should have reset your clocks this weekend to “spring forward.” It’s wonderful to have an extra hour of daylight to spend outside at the end of the day.
Did you know that we have internal clocks that regulate our metabolism? Our master clock is the central clock located in the hypothalamus, and it’s set by light. We also have clocks in our organs, including muscles, fat and liver, that are synchronized by the master clock based on when we eat our meals. When our central and peripheral clocks are out of sync, we increase our risk for diseases linked to human metabolism such as type 2 diabetes, PCOS and heart disease.
Studies show that when people are divided into two groups eating the same number of calories per day, but one group eats more calories at breakfast than at dinner, they experience less insulin resistance than the group that has a light breakfast and eats a large dinner. Studies also show that breakfast skippers have higher blood sugar levels after lunch.
To synchronize your central and peripheral clocks to optimize your metabolism, you should eat breakfast within an hour of waking up, ideally with the sunrise. For optimal sleep quality, it’s important to align your sleep schedule with the sun to increase exposure to natural sunlight by going outside first thing in the morning, and to decrease exposure to artificial light after the sun sets. If you want to lose weight, it’s important to sleep at least 7 hours per night and avoid eating late at night, especially if you have insulin resistance.
One way to boost your metabolism is to increase your muscle mass. Research shows that eating at least 20 grams of protein at each of three meals per day can help increase muscle mass by 25% when compared to eating a low-protein breakfast of only 10 grams, even when protein intake is increased at dinner.
Do you skip breakfast because you’re following an intermittent fasting diet?
An intermittent fasting schedule that forces you to skip breakfast may result in a missed opportunity to build and maintain muscle, which boosts your metabolism and helps you lose weight. You can still experience some of the health benefits (e.g. reduced blood sugar and weight loss) of intermittent fasting when you eat breakfast if you stop eating after dinner and late at night. If you take insulin or you’re at risk for hypoglycemia, fasting is not recommended.
But, many people can tolerate 12 hours of fasting overnight, for example, from 8 PM until 8 AM. You do not need to adopt an extreme protocol of fasting for 16 hours and cramming all of your daily calories into 8 hours. Studies comparing intermittent fasting diets with a reasonable 25% calorie-deficit diet showed no difference in health outcomes or weight loss after one year.
In summary: stop eating after dinner, sleep well, rise with the sun, and eat a healthy breakfast with protein to look and feel your best!