Serving size isn’t all that matters when you want to eat healthily. It’s also about when you eat. Postponing dinner or skipping breakfast is not a good idea.

In fact, a few recent studies by the Proceedings of the Nutrition Society claim that it’s not just what you eat or how much you eat, but it’s about when you eat. Eating outside of a schedule increases your risk for obesity, high blood pressures, and type-2 diabetes.

Eating at Night

The biggest problem is eating late at night. We’ve all been in situations where we had to work late or the day got away from us, and we forgot to eat dinner. Unfortunately, that’s one of the worst things you can do. The truth is that night time eating is linked to weight gain and obesity.

Nighttime eating isn’t just linked to weight gain either. It also causes sleep disturbances, morning anorexia, and psychological distress. So, you see, that’s why it’s so important to eat on a schedule. Skipping or delaying dinner isn’t just a little oops; it can cause a lot of problems down the road.

How to Eat on a Schedule

The reality is that you should be eating six small meals a day. Eating frequently and regularly not only helps your cholesterol and insulin, but it also helps you avoid weight gain. In fact, a study found that adults who consumed calories during the same times each day were less obese than people who had irregular meals even if the regular eaters consumed more calories overall.

It might not make sense to think that you’ll be healthier just by eating at the right time of day, but it plays a large role. The key is the link between nutrition and your metabolism and circadian rhythms. Your body follows a pattern every 24 hours. Eating consistently affects your body’s internal clock keeping all of your metabolic processes on track.

So, how do you eat on a schedule? We have a few tips:

• Plan Your Food: Don’t leave what you’re going to eat up to chance. That’s when you’ll end up missing or delaying meals because you don’t know what to eat. Instead, before you go to work for the day, plan out your breakfast, lunch, dinner, and three snacks.
• Block Your Calendar: No matter how busy you are, you deserve a chance to eat. Don’t let your day get away from you. Instead, block time on your calendar to eat your meals. Even if you have to eat while you work, at least you’ll get a calendar reminder saying what time it is.
• Set a Deadline: Since eating late at night is the biggest issue, set a deadline for the last possible chance for dinner. Make a deal with yourself that you won’t eat after 7:30pm at night. Then, make sure you always have dinner before that deadline.

How do you eat on a schedule?

Yours in GUT Health,
Your Tea

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