Time Restricted Eating

I am reading a book by Dr. Satchin Panda titled ‘The Circadian Code’. I listened to a podcast as he was being interviewed by Max Lugavere (https://www.maxlugavere.com/podcast-1/).Dr. Panda has spent his scientific life researching the circadian rhythms of plants and humans, fascinating stuff. As we learn more about our circadian rhythms, one realizes how complicated we are. More importantly, we need to understand the importance of following those rhythms for optimal health.One chapter is devoted to ‘time restricted eating’. This means that we likely need to eat over a certain time during the day, and nothing after. From a weight loss perspective he found a window of eating of 8 to 10 hours with nothing after was most beneficial for weight loss. Much like morning light tells our brain to wake up and dark tells us to sleep, the first bite and last bite of food signals the intestine to create energy, store and then rest. When we eat this way, we are much less likely to gain weight, and there is a good chance we will lose. It seems our circadian ‘eating’ rhythms may do a lot for weight loss, almost independent of calories.For most of us, I know our most difficult time is evening snacking. From a circadian point of view, eating late will work against us; just as staying up too late leads us to become sleep deprived, tired and lethargic. Whether we call it fasting or time restricted eating, we need time for our insulin levels to drop and to allow fat metabolism to turn on.Dr. Panda feels that evening snacking ‘wakes’ up the digestive tract at a time it should be slowing down and going into ‘repair’ mode.Each of us have such different metabolisms, and we need to find out what works best for us. Certainly, trying to get the right macronutrients is a priority, (low-ish carbohydrates for certain), but I think a lot of us are extending the time we eat too long and therefore not seeing results. For some people it may work best to eat through an 8 hour window, such as 10am to 6pm, and for it others might work better from 8am to 4pm. According to Dr. Panda’s perspective, we need consistency, and even small snacks outside those windows of time might disrupt our ability to lose weight.As you can see, new research brings new thoughts. It’s important we continue to try to understand what foods make us feel in optimum health. It’s also important to look at the timing of meals and to be prepared to leave many hours of the day to ‘rest’ the gut, and turn on fat metabolism. We also need to focus on getting to sleep earlier in the evening, and incorporating regular exercise.Over so many decades we have been exposed too simplistically to the calories in, calories out model, and we need to think differently.Possibly just making a simple change in the timing of meals (shortened window of eating), might make a massive difference not only in weight loss, but in health in general.Keep learning, keep trying new things, realize how complicated we are metabolically, and be willing to change to find out ‘what works’ for you.You can do it. Never ever give up trying.Dr. B