Maybe we can meet for a late lunch?

When my daughter comes for a visit, we like to go out for a restaurant meal just to catch-up, but we are often at odds over when to eat. I like to eat before 6:30 PM, and she prefers to eat after 9 PM.

It’s not just a matter of taste or habit. For years, nutritionists have said a calorie is a calorie and no amount of evidence alters the calorie’s effect on body weight. However, more and more research contradicts this often-repeated theory.  Consuming meals late at night appears to have a deleterious effect on your body weight. The body processes food most efficiency during the day. Scientists speculate that a person’s circadian rhythm, the body’s internal time-keeper, is at play as it responds to lightness and darkness. Staying awake longer at night negatively affects the normal role hormones play in regulating appetite and hunger.  Nighttime hormonal control of energy metabolism is faulty. The longer you stay awake at night the higher the level of ghrelin, a hormone responsible for increasing hunger, and the lower the level of leptin, a hormone responsible for decreasing hunger. Basically, you’re hungrier at night and have less ability to metabolize the food you eat. The Nurses’ Health Study, one of the longest research studies on women’s health, found nurses who worked the night shift had higher levels of obesity and type 2 diabetes. Researchers at Northwestern University fed mice the same type and number of calories but assigned two groups to different eating times – one during their active period and one during their inactive period.  After six weeks, mice assigned to eating during their inactive period gained 48% more body weight.  When food is eaten late at night, the body stores those calorie as fat rather than use them as happens during more active times of the day. If you are serious about maintaining or achieving a healthy body weight, change the timing of your meals.

 The circadian clock elicits appropriate physiological and behavioral responses such as wakefulness, hunger, and energy metabolism during the daylight and the release of the hormone melatonin at night which induces sleepiness. The hypothalamus, the portion of the brain which controls the autonomic nervous systems including hunger, also controls circadian rhythm which keeps you alert during the daylight and sleepy during the night. A phenomenon called, “circadian misalignment,” occurs when we ignore the body’s natural circadian rhythm such as staying awake long into the night. Ignoring the body’s natural desire to sleep negatively affects glucose control after a meal and elevates blood glucose levels to those usually seen among pre-diabetics. Elevated blood glucose is a risk factor for heart disease, kidney disease, blindness, and stroke, just to name a few. To maintain or achieve a healthy body weight, it is imperative you obey the natural law of nature which is to rise during the daylight hours and take care of your daily living activities such as eating and give your body a complete rest during the nighttime.