Plan to eat breakfast within an hour of waking. This way, your breakfast doesn't blend into a mid-morning snack or grazing followed closely by lunch. Lunch should be about four to five hours after breakfast. For example, if you ate breakfast at 7 am, eat lunch between 11 am and noon.
The goal is to eat every 3 to 4 hours in order to keep your blood sugar consistent and for your stomach to optimally digest. Setting this schedule consistently across days can also help curb overeating which can lead to bloating or indigestion.
You should eat dinner approximately four to five hours after eating lunch. If that falls in the 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. window, you hit the last hour of your body's heightened metabolic rate before it starts to slow. Keep in mind that the longer you give your body between your last meal and your bedtime, the better.
One of the biggest motivations of eating dinner early is that it helps with weight loss. According to experts, the best window for eating meals is between 6 a.m. and 7 p.m., and by wrapping up your dinner early, you are more likely to consume fewer calories.
First, new research suggests that our circadian rhythms enable the body to more efficiently burn calories, control blood glucose and optimize digestion earlier in the day. This means eating dinner at 5 p.m., as opposed to 8 p.m., could potentially impact weight loss by aligning closer to the body's internal clock.
So when exactly should you stop eating at night? Scientists can't agree on a single set time, but the consensus seems to be within three hours before bedtime. So if you go to bed at 11 p.m., don't eat after 8 p.m.
Experts say that having a late-night meal keeps the body on 'high alert' at a time where it should be winding down, which can have dangerous implications for our health. Researchers have now said that we should never eat within two hours of our bedtime, and ideally, nothing after 7pm.
There's no such thing as a set time you should eat dinner.
"I would say three hours before your bedtime is an ideal time to have dinner," she says, "It is a good amount of time for your food to digest, then at least your food gets to digest and you're not sleeping on a full stomach."
Timing our meals this way may lead to better body weight, hormone regulation, blood sugar and cholesterol levels, sleep patterns and other metabolic improvements. The evidence indicates that our bodies do best when we eat more in the morning than at night, a pattern that's vastly different from how most Americans eat.
Overeating before the bedtime increases the risk of indigestion and heartburn, resulting in restlessness and sleeplessness. Eating late also sends a message to the brain to keep active that further prevents the body from powering down.
Aside from causing belly fat, eating late and reclining on a full stomach increases your risk of developing acid reflux and indigestion, since gravity is no longer able to pull everything in your tummy straight down.
Experts recommend waiting at least three hours after you've eaten to go to bed. This allows your body time to digest your food so you're not up at night with an upset stomach, indigestion, or acid reflux.
Usually, it is advised that you wait for about 2-3 hours before going to bed once you have had your dinner. This provides ample time for digestion and the contents in your stomach to move into the small intestine – and reduces the likelihood of various digestive problem symptoms.
Ideally the gap between breakfast and dinner should be 12 hours. Therefore, even if you are waking up at 6 am in the morning, make sure the breakfast is taken only after you complete 12 hours of fasting from last night's dinner.
As a guideline, you should stop eating two to three hours before bed. This will give your body enough time to digest your food, lowering your chances of acid reflux and digestive issues keeping you up.
There's no be-all and end-all on what time you should close the kitchen. Some researchers define "eating late" as eating your last meal less than two hours before bedtime, while other research suggests cutting yourself off by 6 p.m. delivers the greatest health benefits.
In America, the average dinner time is 6:22 p.m. Some folks choose to eat well after 9 p.m.
We recommend planning to eat dinner at about four to five hours after lunch. Keep in mind, if your dinner time fall in between the 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. timeframe, you are going to be reaching the last hour of your body's heightened metabolic rate.
Your Slow Metabolism:
When you have a slow metabolism, your body doesn't convert food into energy in sufficient quantities. So most of the food you eat is stored in the form of fats. This is the main reason why some people get fat even though they don't eat much.
“Eat after 8, and you'll gain weight” has a nice ring to it, but it's not true. It is based on the myth that the body cannot properly metabolize food during sleep. However, the body has intricate systems of metabolizing, storing, and using energy from food.