Life with a Twist by Mare_Petras

“Life is about timing.” Carl Lewis

In a “now” society, it’s not always easy to apply the patience, prudence, and discipline required by good timing. As you know realbuzz friends, these good-timing traits are also vital when pursuing, achieving, and maintaining a healthy lifestyle. And the idea that timing is a part of ten-time Olympic medal winner Carl Lewis’s success strategy is proof positive.

Here’s a shot of Lewis (during his University of Houston days), timing the perfect long jump.

Timing is everything, even when eating.

Just as there are peak moments to approach certain situations, it seems there are peak moments to approach your plate. A plethora of studies can be found connecting “what you eat” to weight gain; a recent research focus connects “when you eat” to weight gain.

One May 2012 study (May 2012, Panda, et al.) reported in Cell Metabolism shows that mice restricted to eating for eight hours a day were protected against obesity and other metabolic problems. These time-restricted mice were allowed to eat as much high-fat food as the other mice group who were permitted to eat around the clock. This study shows that just as your body needs a good night’s sleep from activity, it also needs a time-out from food. These results also suggest that the health consequences of eating poorly may be in part due to clashes between our body clocks and eating schedules. 

If you are having trouble achieving your weight loss goals, a success solution may be to work with your biological timing system or circadian clock. The National Institutes of Health define circadian rhythms as “physical, mental and behavioral changes that follow a roughly 24-hour cycle, responding primarily to light and darkness in an organism’s environment.”

Researchers are studying whether eating at the wrong time of the day is contributing to weight gain. They are finding that food should be eaten according to the body’s natural circadian rhythms when the body’s organs are working at the peak efficiency.  Of particular interest to researchers are night shift workers who tend to be overweight, since their work schedules conflict with their natural body clocks.

Another study (2009, Turek et al.) conducted over a period of six weeks involved two groups of mice; one group was fed for twelve hours during the day while the other group was fed for twelve hours during the night. Since mice are nocturnal, the night-eating mice were the ones working within their natural rhythms. In the end, the mice that were fed high-fat during  their normal daytime sleeping hours gained significantly more (48 percent versus 20 percent) weight than mice eating the same type and amount of food during their normal waking night hours.

From this research, realbuzz friends, you can glean a couple valuable insights:

Work with your body, not against it, by enjoying food when your body is performing at its peak. Remember, timing is everything!  

How about you realbuzz friends? What are your experiences with food and timing?

Until next time . . . a diurnal-dining Mare