Doctors have long advised people trying to lose weight to stop eating after the sun sets, making lunch the largest meal of the day.
Now, researchers from the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) and Columbia University can point to another important benefit of this advice for metabolic health, revealing that eating at least 45 percent of daily calories after 5 p.m. hinders the body’s ability to regulate blood sugar levels.
Eating later at night can dramatically increase your risk of developing diabetes.
Their findings could provide some scientific validity to the intermittent fasting diet plan, which discourages eating later in the evening.
About 10 percent of Americans use intermittent fasting as a diet. Fans of this approach typically restrict daily eating to a six-hour period each day, such as 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.
And people who practice intermittent fasting tend to eat most of their calories earlier in the day.
One of the co-authors of the study, Dr. Diana Díaz Rizzolo, said: “The body’s ability to metabolize glucose is limited during the night, because insulin secretion is reduced and the sensitivity of our cells to this hormone decreases due to the circadian rhythm. which is determined by a central clock in our brain that is coordinated with the hours of daylight and night.’
People who consume 45 percent or more of their daily calories after 5 p.m. are less able to regulate their blood sugar levels, which, over time, can increase their risk of diabetes.
He studypublished in Nutrition and Diabetes, included 26 people aged 50 to 75 who were overweight or obese and had prediabetes or type 2 diabetes.
People were divided into two groups: those who ate early and those who ate late. They ate the same foods and the same amount of calories, just at different times of the day.
Those who ate more after 5 p.m., those who ate later, had higher glucose levels after a glucose test, suggesting lower glucose tolerance.
Meanwhile, intermittent fasting has been shown to significantly improve the body’s ability to effectively use glucose from food and use insulin to control blood sugar levels, in part because it encourages people to finish their meal at the end of the day. relatively early day, around 5 p.m.
By limiting the eating window and extending the amount of time without eating, the body can better process glucose more efficiently.
The researchers added that foods typically eaten late at night are higher in calories and often processed, “which may explain why late eating is associated with higher body weight and fat mass.”
Dr. Díaz Rizzolo said: “Until now, personal nutrition decisions have been based on two main questions: how much we eat and what foods to choose.
‘With this study, a new factor in cardiometabolic health begins to become increasingly important: when we eat.’
In addition to eating unhealthy foods at night, late eaters have been shown to burn calories at a slower rate. Their bodies also showed signs of encouraging fat storage and reducing its breakdown, which can lead to more fat growth, according to a Harvard University study. study.
In the weeks before the Harvard study, 16 overweight or obese people followed fixed sleeping and eating schedules. Each participant experienced early and late meals, allowing the researchers to examine the effects of meal timing in the same people.
The results showed that eating late decreased leptin, the hormone that signals satiety and influences hormones that regulate appetite, making participants feel hungrier over time.
These changes could potentially influence the risk of developing obesity, which is a key risk factor for type 2 diabetes.