If you want to get the most from a healthy diet, when you eat is important. One of the things that I tell clients in Oceanside, CA is to have an easy to digest high carb snack with a little protein about an hour or so before working out. It helps boost your energy level and allows you to get the most from a workout. It should also have some protein. Food like a banana, mango or grapes in some unsweetened yogurt is a good combination.
If you eat most of your calories in the morning, you’ll be more apt to lose weight.
There’s many studies that point to eating earlier in the day as a weight control technique. Not only does eating early help you shed weight, it also helps hormone regulation, improves cholesterol levels, normalizes blood sugar and help with metabolic functions. One study showed that people who ate half their calories at breakfast lost twice as much weight over twelve weeks as those that ate half their daily calories at their evening meal.
Eating your carbs in the morning is important.
Eating early is important, but so is what you eat. Your early hours should contain most of your carbs. Not only is there more opportunity to burn off those carbs, rather than allowing them to be stored as fat when you sleep, it also helps keep insulin levels more consistent throughout the day, which reduces the risk of heart disease and diabetes. In fact, some studies show that eating more food earlier in the day made it easier for people to maintain a healthy diet.
Eating patterns can be a form of intermittent fasting.
Intermittent fasting is a way of timing your eating. For many years there have been studies that showed it was good for health, much like a reboot on the computer. You don’t have to go without eating for days, you can achieve the same results by timing your meals. Just by making a few changes, like eating breakfast 90 minutes later and eating supper 90 minutes earlier, you’re doing intermittent fasting. A study showed this type of eating pattern also helped people who followed it lost twice as much as the control group that ate normally.
- It’s important to allow a big meal to digest at least two or three hours before you go to bed, rather than going to sleep on a full stomach. That can create problems like acid reflux and weight gain.
- If you try intermittent fasting use the 8/16 hour method. Eat all your food in an eight hour window and fast for the sixteen hours.
- Eating a small amount of carbs and protein after a workout is important, too. It helps your body build muscle tissue.
- Whether you choose to go with intermittent fasting or not, eating lighter dinners and more at breakfast and lunch will help you shed weight.