Healthy eating schedule

It fits your own work and rest rhythm, matches your daily consumption rhythm, and can last for a long time without pain. It is much more important than sticking to the rigid standard of "breakfast at 7 o'clock, lunch at 12 o'clock, dinner at 6 o'clock".

I guess many people have seen the "healthy eating chart that is accurate to the minute", which says that eating breakfast after 7 o'clock will hurt your stomach, and eating dinner after 8 o'clock will make you fat. I have stepped into this pit before. In order to make up for the so-called healthy time, I worked overtime until 11 o'clock the day before, and set the alarm clock for 6:30 the next day to get up and have breakfast. As a result, my stomach was not "on" when I woke up. After stuffing a whole egg-filled pancake, I felt nauseous all morning, and I couldn't eat lunch due to acid reflux.

Later, after talking to friends in the nutrition department, I found out that the previous default of "having three meals on time" was actually adapted to the work and rest schedule of most people decades ago, which was "work at sunrise and rest at sunset." At that time, few people stayed up late and few worked night shifts. Of course, it was okay to eat according to this schedule, but now, with thousands of people having different schedules, it is anti-human to impose a unified standard. After all, it takes about 4-6 hours for ordinary people to empty their stomachs after a meal. This is just the right amount of time between meals. It is not easy to overeat when you are so hungry that you feel slightly empty.

There are actually two schools of thought in the nutrition circle. One school still insists on "prioritizing regular eating." They say that the secretion of digestive enzymes in the gastrointestinal tract has a fixed rhythm, and eating at a fixed time for a long time can form a conditioned reflex in the gastrointestinal tract, making digestion and absorption more efficient, and making gastrointestinal diseases less likely to occur. This point of view is indeed applicable to people with stable schedules and no special circumstances. For example, office workers who work from 9 to 5 and seldom stay up late. If they follow the rhythm of "eating breakfast 1-2 hours after getting up, 4-6 hours between meals, and finishing dinner 2-3 hours before going to bed", there will basically be no problems. Many friends around me who have good gastrointestinal problems maintain similar meal times all year round. They don't need to remember them deliberately, and they will naturally be hungry when the time comes.

The other group advocates "rhythm matching" and believes that everyone's biological clock is different, and forcing a meal time will disrupt the metabolic rhythm. The most typical ones are those who need to work long shifts and young people who are accustomed to going to bed late and getting up late. You can't let an emergency nurse who gets off work at 2 a.m. and wakes up at 10 a.m. every day have to get up to have breakfast at 7 a.m., right? In this case, postpone all three meals to three hours, have breakfast and lunch at 11 o'clock, eat something at 16 o'clock to make up for the consumption, and have dinner at 21 o'clock. As long as the interval is appropriate and there is no gastrointestinal burden after eating, it will be healthier than forcing the standard time. The 16+8 light fast that has been popular in the past two years actually follows this logic. As long as the eating time is controlled within an 8-hour window, whether you eat from 10 to 18 o'clock or from 12 to 20 o'clock, as long as you don't have dizziness, fatigue, or hypoglycemia, it is completely feasible. I have a friend who is a designer who always starts working in the afternoon, so he sets his eating window from 13:00 to 21:00. He has persisted for more than half a year, and his physical examination indicators are much better than before when he had to eat dinner at 6 o'clock and get up to eat instant noodles in the middle of the night.

Another controversial point is whether to eat extra meals. Some people say that adding a small snack between meals can stabilize blood sugar and avoid eating too much at the next meal. Others say that frequent eating will keep the gastrointestinal tract in a working state without rest, and will continue to secrete insulin, which is not conducive to weight control. In fact, this also depends on the individual situation. If you are prone to hypoglycemia or consume a lot of daily energy (such as running out frequently or exercising more than three times a week), it is absolutely fine to add a small apple, a small handful of nuts, and half a box of sugar-free yogurt at 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. ； But if you have a large body weight, are controlling sugar, and are not hungry at all between meals, then there is absolutely no need to force extra meals. Don’t put a burden on your gastrointestinal tract just to make up for the so-called "eating less and more meals".

After all, the core criterion for judging healthy eating time is your own feelings: you feel comfortable after eating, you don't get hungry soon, and you don't feel full, you can persist for a long time, and you don't feel like it's a task when it's time to eat. That's enough. There is really no need to worry about other people's schedules. After all, your body is much more reliable than those cold numbers.