Meal Timing Done Right

Whether you’re trying to lose weight or boost overall health, when you eat makes a difference.

- Hallie Levine

SURE, THERE IS some truth to that old adage “you are what you eat.” But the latest research shows that when you eat can be just as crucial. “Eating in tune with your circadian rhythms— a.k.a. your body’s inner clock that guides you to wake and sleep— automatically helps your health. You are getting fuel when you can actually use it and allowing your body to rest when it needs to,” says Michael Roizen, MD, chief wellness officer of the Cleveland Clinic and coauthor of What to Eat When. In fact, according to a 2015 study, ignoring these rhythms and eating at the wrong times—say, late at night—can raise blood sugar, a risk factor for type 2 diabetes. Want to understand meal timing a bit more? Experts weighed in on the four key guidelines to follow.

1 Eat during daylight hours. “Our bodies evolved to be primed for food during the day so that we’d have plenty of energy for survival,” says Dr. Roizen. This means your body is most sensitive to insulin—a hormone that moves glucose from your blood into the majority of cells, including your muscle cells, to be used as fuel—during the day. Your resistance to insulin is highest at night, when you’re less active and your body thinks it should be slumbering. As a result, you wind up storing most of the calories you consume in the evening as fat, Dr. Roizen says.