When to Eat Your Meals for Effective Weight Loss

If you are looking to lose weight, when you eat your meals seems to carry some importance, recent research has told us. Unfortunately, there is little clinical evidence yet to tell us the reasons, and just how important spacing your meals really is. But it is interesting to note with many people there does to be sure seem to be some correlation between the number of meals we consume and how consistent we are regarding the time of day we eat.

Much of our findings with human reaction to eating patterns line up with animal research, and because of the more controlled structure for feeding animals we have a greater data base. Animals which are fed at unusual times seem to throw their "peripheral clocks" out of sync. We all have circadian rhythms, and they have an influence on a wide range of functions, which would take into effect metabolic rate and how we sleep. The master clock in our brain controls and maintains these rhythms, and they in turn affect the peripheral clocks in our body cells.

With animals, it has been well established that disrupting those peripheral clocks by altering their feeding times will throw everything out of sync with the master clock. It is still a theory, but that could alter sleep patterns, metabolism, and of course weight control. Although much research remains to be done, studies on shift workers and others who must vary their dietary patterns have shown parallel results to these animal studies.

It has been a widespread belief that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, and therefore has to be the most nutritious. But again, although this intuitively sounds reasonable there has not been a great deal of scientific evidence to support it. There seems to be more evidence to support eating evenly spaced meals, perhaps every three or four hours, is a better way to support a steady metabolism and help to reduce insulin spikes. This is all well-known to control weight gain.

Most people who have weight issues try to control their calorie intake by spacing their meals, which goes against what they think they may be accomplishing. First, the body stats to go into starvation mode and slows down. Then in order to quell the hunger pangs, they pick up whatever is near, which is probably the candy dish, and the sugar hit tides them over. But not in a healthy way, of course.

Then when it is meal time, they reward themselves by binge eating, which further adds to the problem. The answer appears to be to never eat to the point that you feel bloated, but never get to the point where you are starving. If we are to keep our master clock in rhythm, the best way is to maintain a reasonably steady schedule for weight control. Even though we haven't a large amount of data to support this, from what we do know it seems to be another key to controlling our weight.

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