The Perfect Day: Tapping Into The Circadian Rhythm

When To Eat
Our circadian hardwiring causes the same foods to be metabolised in different ways, depending on when they are eaten. You’ve heard a thousand times that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, and it is. Regular breakfast eaters tend to be leaner than breakfast skippers. This is the case even when eating breakfast causes a person to eat more total calories in a day, perhaps because eating breakfast increases energy expenditure.

If first thing in the morning is the best time to eat, late at night is the worst time to eat. Research suggests that exposure to artificial light at night disrupts natural circadian rhythms in ways that influence the timing of food intake, alter metabolism and promote weight gain. Mice housed in a constantly lit environment eat more at night and are significantly fatter than mice housed in an environment with a natural light/ dark cycle, despite eating the same total number of calories and burning the same number of calories through activity.

You’re not a mouse, of course, and it is difficult to perform this kind of controlled experiment in humans to determine whether what’s true for mice in this case is true for us. But there is reason to believe it is because nightshift workers have been scientifically shown to carry more weight than dayshift workers. So try to restrict your eating after sundown.

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