All in the Timing
What you eat matters. But when you eat could play a crucial role in weight loss.
Want to lose weight? Try eating lunch earlier. A recent study, published in the International Journal of Obesity, concluded that those who ate lunch earlier in the day lost more weight than those who ate later in the day. It’s the first link to be established between meal timing and weight loss. The study involved 420 obese Spanish subjects, who had an average age of 42 and an average bmi of 31. 4. One group finished lunch before 3 p.m. and lost 22 pounds during the 20-week study, while a second group, which didn’t finish lunch until later in the afternoon, lost 17 pounds.
Greg Hluska, a 35-year-old from Regina, admits his eating schedule is not ideal, given that he’s trying to drop about 25 pounds. He recently started running, making it a priority to get fit. “Frequently what happens is that I’ll go to bed late, I’ll have a ton of coffee in my system and won’t sleep well,” he says. “I’ll wake up with my stomach feeling a bit sour. I won’t eat breakfast – chances are my first meal won’t be until 2 p.m., at which point I’m so hungry that the idea of healthy eating goes out the window. My body is constantly stressed and so I put it into starvation mode. I trick it into storing as many calories as possible and because my sleeping pattern is weird, I eat fewer meals.” In the Spanish weight-loss study, the results showed that those who ate late lunches, also were more likely to have skipped breakfast, another key factor in weight gain.
Hluska has a family history of heart disease and high blood pressure; he made it his top priority to get fit. “I can’t escape the feeling that if I don’t make serious changes, I’m going to die in my 40s,” he says. Hluska runs 4k to 12k per day, but with Regina’s record snowfall this year and several freeze/thaw cycles, Hluska resorts to running around a 50-metre track in a local gym. “I never run as far indoors as I do outdoors,” he says. “By the time 6k [on the track] rolls around, I’m so bored I just want to do something else.”
Hluska knows that he needs to improve his exercise and eating habits. He started by spacing out his meals before and after every run and maintaining a positive attitude. “My body works the best if I put some natural sugar into my system with an apple or an orange and then eat something a little more substantial afterwards,” Hluska says. “After I exercise, I am not only more motivated to make healthier choices but I find that what I do eat I burn through it a lot faster.” Hluska’s new routine hasn’t come without its challenges, including struggling to maintain a consistent breakfast time and looking for quick results. His results-oriented outlook and his weightloss strategy often clash. “You want to get to that final step… [but] the journey isn’t really all that fun,” Hluska explains. “When it comes to fitness I must change my mentality to focus less on my final goal and instead on each step.”
For some runners, establishing a meal timing routine is challenging. One of the biggest obstacles is time – there’s not enough of it in the day to eat properly and consistently. But if you’re prepared and you plan ahead, Nicole Springle, dietitian with Cleveland Clinic Canada, says you stand a better chance of meeting your weight-loss goals. “Having quick and easy [healthy] snacks on hand can make it a lot easier,” she says. When planning your workouts and easy runs each week, take the time to plan your meals and fuelling strategy in the same vein, Springle says.
The standard advice is to eat small meals at regular times, and avoid eating a large meal at night. “People don’t sleep as well when they eat large meals [right before bed] and a lot of that comes from the pressure that it puts on the esophagus and some people experience acid reflux. But if you don’t eat enough during the day, it tends to leave you to embrace more snacking behaviours at night. So it isn’t just that the dinners are big but that people are snacking on things after dinner.”
Springle notes that one of the biggest problems for runners looking to adopt a timed eating schedule is that they don’t fuel themselves quickly enough after exercise and that ends up leading to bad choices later on. “If you can get the right foods in the right portions right after training, it’s essential,” Springle explains. “By having a snack [at least 30 minutes after you train] with protein to rebuild your muscles and carbohydrates to refuel your energy, it’s a good strategy to curb bad food choices, but if you wait one or two hours, that’s when you’ll be prone to making poor choices.”