L onger?g dinena et r
16 SEPTEMBER 2016 Want t o l i ve at And no, i T’S not wishful Thinking To have your LAST MEAL of THE day So EARLY, just BECAUSE you live i n A city like dubai
There was a time, back when I was a kid, when dinner would be served at 7pm and my siblings and I would be in bed by eight on t he dot. Of course, those were simpler times, when my biggest worry was whether my sister had managed to collect more stickers than I had from the Tiffany cream wafer packs we snacked on everyday. Fast forward a couple of decades, and I was often getting home after work past 10pm, ravenous and craving considerable portions of anything in sight. The conscious decision to start having dinner early again only came about this year, after a conversation with a friend who swore his weight loss was down due to his new 7pm dinner time, since it was the only thing he’d changed in his routine. Well, I sure didn’t lose any weight — but the routine stuck. And good thing too apparently, because a new study now says that’s one way to lower your chances of a heart attack.
In assessing more than 700 adults, researchers — addressing the world’s largest cardiovascular congress in Rome last month — found that “eating dinner late had the most significant impact on overnight blood pressure” and that when you eat may almost be as important as what you eat.
Ah, but this is Dubai, you say. Long work hours and a vibrant social scene make it virtually impossible to have a hot, healthy dinner on the table by the 7pm deadline. That’s why we sought out people in the city who are managing to stick to their schedules everyday — despite the odds — to help you figure out how you can too.
“IT’S A LIFESTYLE”
Dubai- based Morgan Carlson is actually way ahead of the game. He typically aims to have his dinner sometime between 5- 7pm, straight after his workout, although it could get much later than that “if something gets in the way”. Still, dinner at five? “I’m Swedish,” he declares simply, by way of explanation. “Growing up in Sweden, you always seem to eat four times in the day: breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, dinner like a princess and then a late night snack before heading to bed.”