Spaced and Regular Meal Times
TLDR - Eating meals at regular times helps strengthen your circadian rhythm. Spaced mealtimes ensure that the food you eat moves through your digestive tract completely.
Circadian Rhythm
Eating breakfast within an hour of sunrise signals to our body that it’s time to wake up and start the day, while also providing essential nutrients for various biological processes.
This gives you the energy needed to start your day.
If you skip breakfast, your body may also enter a heightened state of ‘danger’, unsure of when it will receive food next.
By maintaining regular mealtimes, we reinforce these signals, making it easier for our body to maintain a balanced circadian rhythm.
The Migrating Motor Complex
A key component of digestion is the migrating motor complex (MMC), a cyclical, recurring pattern of motility that occurs in the stomach and small intestine during fasting. The MMC helps move food and waste through the digestive tract, preventing bacterial overgrowth and ensuring efficient nutrient absorption. This process is optimized when we wait at least four hours between meals, allowing the MMC to complete its cycle. If we continue to snack or eat food throughout the day, the MMC is unable to complete its cycle and function properly.
Benefits of Four Hours Between Meals:
Complete Digestion: This interval allows for the complete digestion of food, reducing the risk of indigestion and bloating.
Optimized MMC: The MMC is most active during fasting periods, ensuring that food and waste are efficiently moved through the digestive tract.
Leptin Signaling: Proper spacing between meals helps regulate leptin, a hormone that controls hunger and energy balance, reducing the likelihood of overeating.
The Benefits of a Small or Skipped Dinner
Digestion is one of the most energy demanding processes our body undertakes daily. When we eat, our body focuses its energy on breaking down food, absorbing nutrients, and eliminating waste. Consuming a big meal late in the evening means our body spends the night working on digestion rather than focusing on restorative processes.
Benefits:
Enhanced Repair: During fasting, our body can focus on repairing tissues, reducing inflammation, and healing the gut lining.
Improved Sleep: Without the burden of digestion, our sleep quality improves, leading to better overall health.
Gut Health: Fasting supports the growth of beneficial gut bacteria and helps prevent conditions like leaky gut and SIBO.