What if we had an English dinner around 6pm instead of waiting until night. An evening meal eaten early enough and in a balanced way will have benefits for both weight and sleep. Explanations:
Fall and the start of the school year are good times to make new resolutions, especially to improve your health as winter approaches. And there is no need to choose big changes, sometimes small adjustments are enough to improve the comfort of your life. For example, you may choose to revise your meal times. No more sandwiches being eaten at the computer keyboard while telecommuting and meals being reheated at 9:30pm. From now on, we sit down at the table as soon as possible to slowly but surely relax our bodies and enjoy the rest of the evening with a calm mind. Explanations:
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Improved metabolic health
We easily delay dinner time and therefore bedtime. Only this reflex, turned into a habit, can harm us. “A busy schedule increases appetite, and therefore the desire to gain fat, and these behaviors lead to cardiovascular disease, diabetes, or even obesity in the long term,” recalls timing biologist Damien Daven, professor and director of the department. Comet Inserm in Unicaen.
Choosing to have dinner around 18:00 or 19:00, the trend will change, according to the latest scientific research. “American Human and Animal Research published in 2019 in the journal Cellular metabolism, claims that by limiting food intake to 10 hours a day, starting with breakfast at 8 a.m. and ending with dinner at 6 p.m., we improve metabolic health, thereby reducing the risks of diabetes and inflammation, premature cellular aging, points out Gilles Mittier, director of the Inserm nutrition “Diabetes and Brain” laboratory. Promising results, but which, however, deserve further improvement, according to the specialist.
Stabilize your weight
An early dinner will also, to a lesser extent, help control your weight, provided you don’t go to bed too late afterwards, explains Philippe Poilart, a teacher-researcher of culinary practice and health at the UniLaSalle Polytechnic Institute. This is called overnight fasting, a concept similar to intermittent fasting. “When the body is deprived of food for more than 11 hours, the level of insulin in the blood drops, which is necessary for the metabolism of carbohydrates and lipids,” explains the specialist. At the same time, the release of growth hormone increases and causes the release of fatty acids into the blood, resulting in a loss of fat mass.
Alternating hours increase appetite
Damien Daven, Chronology Biologist
But if we choose to eat later, we lose this benefit. “Human biological rhythms are programmed in such a way that our food intake serves to provide the necessary energy for muscle work during the day. But in the evening, they are directly stored for the next day and thus produce fat reserves,” says chronologist Damien Daven.
Based on this observation, one might think that it would be wiser to delay breakfast time to extend the overnight fast. It all depends on the type of activity to be practiced the next day. “If you’re a high-level athlete, you definitely shouldn’t delay this meal, on the other hand, if you rarely leave the house, you’ll need fewer calories for remote work in front of the computer,” says chronology biologist Damien Daven.
On the other hand, for more than 16 to 18 hours, this type of fasting should not be continued long-term, warn teacher-researcher Philippe Pouillard and Jean-Michel Lecerf, a nutritionist at the Institut Pasteur in Lille, otherwise you: will eat more and therefore increase the calories at the next meal. “As a general rule, we manage to stay in tune with our feelings of hunger by preventing it with a regular schedule or by eating enough beforehand,” adds Jean-Michel Lecerf.
Digestion to respect
If there is no ideal time for dinner, it is important to keep this meal away from bedtime. “When we digest, the food we eat burns and produces heat, this is called postprandial thermogenesis. However, for deep sleep, the body temperature has to drop, which is why you have to wait long enough for all the nutrients to be assimilated before going to sleep,” explains Gilles Mittier, director of the Inserm nutrition laboratory “Diabetes and brain”. .
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Learn how to measure quantities
In order for the digestion of food to be as short as possible, it is recommended to limit the amount taken. “A light dinner will take 2 to 3 hours to digest, while a large meal at a restaurant will take 5 to 6 hours,” says Gilles Mittier, who led the study.
In terms of quality, we will find on the plate… the same proportions as they tasted during the meal. “Half of vegetables, accompanied by a quarter of protein, animal or vegetable, a quarter of starchy foods, but also fat, dairy and fruit,” lists nutritionist Jean-Michel Lecerf.
In the starchy foods department, Gilles Mithieux extols the virtues of pasta al dente. “They produce a long-lasting release of glucose into the blood, which will reduce hunger, calm the brain and thus help the body sleep,” he notes. Dietary fiber in fruits and vegetables in turn stimulates glucose production by the microbiota without raising body temperature.
Source: Le Figaro
