A question commonly asked by health enthusiasts is “What is the best time to consume our calories each day?” The diet industry and fad diets might lead you to believe that there is a precise time of the day to eat your meals that is best or “healthiest.”
But for most of us, the time of the day we eat our meals determines myriad factors. Our work schedules, our hunger levels, our mood, the medications we take, and even the times our family, friends, and co-workers are free to share a meal, all play a role in determining when we consume a meal.
The fluid nature of day-to-day life means that sticking to exact mealtimes every day is challenging — and some days, it just might not be possible. Plus, the best mealtimes for you may change or evolve throughout your life.
Nevertheless, this doesn’t mean that mealtimes don’t matter. Research suggests that the time of the day we eat and the amount of time that elapses between meals may have profound effects on our health.
This article explores why mealtimes matter and how to choose the best mealtimes for your lifestyle.
Weight loss advice tends to focus on what to eat to lose weight so much that many of us are forgetting to look at other factors – like the best time to eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
While ultimately whether you follow a diet that works and how much food you consume will be the marker of weight loss, choosing when you eat meals could have a huge impact on how hungry you get throughout the day. Luckily, recent research by the University of Murcia in Spain has pinpointed the best time to eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner for optimum performance throughout the day.
They found that the best time to have breakfast is just after 7 am – 7.11 am to be precise. It’s also better to get stuck into your lunch sooner rather than later – between 12.30 and 1 pm. 12.38 pm is the best time. And when it comes to dinner, the later you leave it the worse it can be for your diet. So try to eat dinner between 6 pm and 6.30 pm, with 6.14 pm being the best time according to the study.
But if you’re a late riser and don’t see yourself making a healthy breakfast before the sunrise, “aiming to eat within 1 hour of waking is ideal,” says food scientist Dr. Claire Shortt. “It keeps our hunger hormones in check and keeps us fuller and satisfied for longer.”
Ultimately, she says, what time you eat is “all about balance”. “For the remaining meals of the day, it makes sense to spread out your food intake to maintain energy. Our body responds well to routine, so sticking to a 1 pm lunchtime and 6 pm dinner time if life allows is ideal. Delaying meals too late in the afternoon and evening may result in overeating or making poor food choices.”‘
According to the same research by the University of Murcia, 11.01 am, 3.14 pm and 9.31 pm are the best times for snacking. This is when your willpower is most likely to fail you. But, Claire says, you should consider having a snack anytime you’re going for more than four hours between meals or after an intense workout.
What you choose to snack on is important, however, as not all the go-to snacks will keep you going between meals. “Choose ones that are high in fiber coupled with a high-protein ingredient as it will keep you feeling satisfied for longer. It’s always important to practice mindful eating, even when snacking. Be present and be aware. Plan what you will eat for each meal and healthy snacks in advance to help you make better food choices and stick to them,” Dr. Shortt, lead scientist at Food Marble explains.
And while in some cases, following a high protein diet will be a great choice, be aware of eating too much protein in a bid to stay full. “Avoid eating too much protein in one meal, especially with little or no fiber,” she says. “There is always a limit on how much our body will absorb, so anything over that is made available to our gut microbes. Our gut microbes have a preference for high-fiber foods, however, if none are available, they will start to break down any undigested protein. This process can produce products that are harmful to gut health and longevity.”
If you are looking to lose weight, the most important thing to remember is that you must be eating fewer calories than you’re burning every day. Known as an energy deficit or a calorie deficit, research from the University of Vienna says this can be achieved in several ways – but unfortunately, it’s the only way to lose weight. Diets like the 16:8 plan and low carb/high fat plans, including the Banting diet, may promote themselves as sure-fire routes to weight loss but unless you’re in this deficit, you won’t see any changes.
This is because when you consume food, your body metabolizes its properties for energy. This energy is what the body uses for everything from breathing to walking. If you eat more food than what your body needs, you have more energy than is required and so the extra becomes fat. If you eat less than what you need, you’ll have less energy and your body will turn to its fat stores for fuel. It’s during the latter process that weight loss happens.
Whatever you do, don’t skip meals. “Skipping breakfast tends to be associated with various markers of poor health like weight gain and impaired glucose metabolism,” Dr. Shortt says. “Often people find eating breakfast minimizes impulsive snacking and sets the stage for good nutrition for the day. In particular, eating a well-balanced breakfast with a good source of protein, e.g. Greek yogurt, coupled with high fiber food like berries can set up your metabolism for the day.”
It’s not only breakfast that people like to skip through. According to a 2016 review by the School of Exercise and Nutrition Sciences at Deakin University in Australia, breakfast was the most-commonly skipped meal. But dinner came in a close second, with up to 57% of people opting out of their midday meal. The consequences of this don’t only impact weight gain, a further study 2021 from Osaka University found, with those who skipped lunch or dinner are more likely to be overweight. Both men and women who skipped their final meal of the day were more likely to sleep for fewer hours at night, leading to feelings of being tired all the time, They were also more likely to be smokers or heavy drinkers.
As well as following the best time to eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner, you need to get into a calorie deficit. To find yours, have a look at a calorie calculator – this will give you your deficit threshold, along with your maintenance level. For example, if you’re a 30-year-old woman who’s 5 ft 4 and weighs 70kg (as is average for the UK) then you’re calorie target to lose 0.25 kg per week will be 1,677 calories per day.
Following that threshold, this is what your day could look like:
Try hitting 400 calories if you can with some low-calorie breakfast recipes, just like these…
– Blackcurrant bircher muesli: 395cals
– Quick farmhouse fry-up: 221cals + 250ml glass of orange juice: 118cals = 339cals
– Slimming World’s muffins with smoked salmon: 295cals + Tall Starbucks cappuccino: 90cals = 385cals
At lunchtime (between 12.30 pm and 1 pm), stick to no more than 500 calories consumed here too. You’ll need a boost halfway through the day and it’s important to give your body the nutrients and protein it needs. For this, opt for complex instead of refined carbohydrates such as those found in white pasta, rice, and bread. You’ll stay fuller for longer and won’t experience an energy drop a couple of hours after lunch. Go for some of these low-calorie lunch ideas for inspiration…
– Ainsley Harriott’s chicken pasta with peas: 426cals
– Spring vegetable tortilla: 390cals
– Quick Quorn lunch bowl: 161cals + 1 wholemeal roll: 155cals = 316cals
Dinner (between 6 pm and 6.30 pm) should be the last time you consume calories, so aim for around 500 calories. You don’t want to feel too full before bed so it’s best to base your dinner around protein and vegetables, rather than going for a carb-heavy pasta dish. For more inspiration, take a look at some of these healthy low-calorie dinner recipes
– Mellow-spiced chicken and chickpeas: 309cals
– Peppers with spicy turkey stuffing: 302cals
– Split pea and vegetable curry: 300cals
Stick to 400 calories for breakfast, 500 for lunch, and 500 for dinner for the mealtime portion of your calories. 1400 total calories. If you do this, you’ll be able to treat yourself to two 100-calorie snacks throughout the day. You also have an extra 77 calories for any milk in tea or coffee that you have.
When you are ready to take calorie counting and monitoring to the next level, you’ll want to check out HealthCodes DNA’s custom nutrition plan. This personalized dietary service provides the number of calories you need per day based on your age, gender, physical activity level, and goals. It also takes things a step further and provides you with custom meal ideas based on food preferences and virtual coaching, too. To learn more, visit the HealthCodes DNA wellness testing home page.
Many medications must be timed with meals and may dictate when you need to eat. Conditions like diabetes also require eating at certain times of the day to maintain proper blood sugar levels.
Your daily routine. We often time our meals around work schedules and personal obligations. That may mean eating earlier or later than you would ideally like to. In this case, maintaining consistency may still help limit disruptions to your circadian rhythm.
On days when you have no choice but to eat later in the evening, choosing small, nutrient-dense, yet simple meals can aid digestion and limit circadian rhythm disruptions.
Eating at night has long been associated with weight gain. Years ago, nutrition pioneer Adele Davis gave her well-known advice to “eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper.”
Despite the above thinking, the conventional wisdom today is that a calorie is a calorie, regardless of when you eat it, and that what causes weight gain is simply eating more calories than you burn. Nutrition experts call this the calorie in/calorie out theory of weight control.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Weight Control Information Network website, “it does not matter what time of day you eat. It is what and how much you eat and how much physical activity you do during the whole day that determines whether you gain, lose, or maintain your weight.”
A study in the journal Obesity added to the confusion by suggesting that there may be more to nighttime eating than just overeating calories. Northwestern University researchers found that eating at night led to twice as much weight gain — even when total calories consumed were the same. But this research was done on mice, not humans, and the reason for the weight gain is unknown. And a single mouse study should not cause us to toss out the wealth of evidence supporting the calorie in/calorie out the theory.
Still, there are good reasons to be cautious about eating at night. Diet books, dietitians, and even Oprah recommend not eating after dinner (other than a small, calorie-controlled snack) because it’s just so easy to overdo it.
Trust your instincts and what works best for your situation. Mealtimes will likely fluctuate from day to day. It’s important to trust your instincts and allow yourself to eat when you’re hungry, even if it’s at a different time of the day than you planned.
Along this same vein of understanding what works for you, an essential prerequisite of knowing when to consume calories is to know your body and its encoded metabolism. HealthCodes DNA provides custom diet plans in the Wellness and Nutrition Panels that work together to build a healthy routine of consuming calories at the right time in the day, preventing you from binge eating and consuming not the best meals for you. The Wellness Panel focuses on macronutrients, while the Nutrition Panel focuses on micronutrients such as vitamins and minerals.
All diet plans made with these DNA nutrition test kits are made exclusively for you, right down to your DNA. This program unlocks the healthiest you. It will find the most targeted approaches using your DNA. This prevents plateauing and makes you see improvements for the hard work you put in.
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