Looking for The Ideal Time to Eat at Night to Lose Weight? Here's When to Eat Your Meals

When you are on a regiment to lose weight, you might get told to watch your calories, macronutrients or the food quality which are the regular focus when doing a diet. Even though this has been proven to help a lot of people to lose weight, the fact is there is still a lot we don't know about this, especially the biological and environmental variables.

But since diet is still a developing method of weight loss, one of the variables that has been the object of research is the meal timing. Several studies over the last five years have found a similar finding which is that when you eat your meal will have a great impact on your effort to lose weight. If you are wondering about the ideal time to eat at night to lose weight, here's your answer.

Breakfast

The first meal of the day is breakfast, and when you eat your breakfast could really help your diet and reach your desired goals. With breakfast, a lot of people are not asking about what time to eat breakfast, but rather whether to have breakfast at all. The sure thing is the fact that we are technically fasting every time we sleep and the ideal gap between dinner and breakfast on the next day is 12 hours.

Not only to lose weight, this 12-hours gap between dinner and the next day's breakfast also has a lot of health benefits like reduced stress, improved cellular function and reduced inflammation. If you are a morning person, you could eat your dinner at 7 pm so you could have your breakfast at 7 am the next day. But if you're not a breakfast person, you could eat your first meal of the day after 11 am.

Lunch

From the research, lunch timing would have the least impact on losing weight. But it is important to understand that your lunch should be the biggest meal of the day, along with your breakfast if you're the kind of person who eats breakfast. This is related to the circadian rhythms that will increase the body's efficiency on the earlier part of the day in terms of digesting food, regulating hormones and burning calories.

Not only the biggest meal of the day, your lunch should be the meal of the day with the most nutrients. Food is your body fuel that will help you to function and you would need it the most during the day where you are most active and when you also need the maximum brain power.

Dinner

When we talk about dinner, it is a general consensus among researchers and health professionals that you should eat your dinner early especially when you are trying to lose some weight. The ideal time to eat at night to lose weight is at least two hours before you go to bed. Not only this, you also need to remember that your kitchen and refrigerator should be off limits after you eat your dinner.

When you don't do late night snacking or eating, you will let your body digest your dinner properly and then will give you a much better sleep. Going to bed right after dinner when your stomach is full will make it less likely for you to get adequate sleep since your body would be busy digesting the food you just ate.

A good sleep is very important not only for your health, but also to help you in your effort to lose weight. A lack of high quality sleep will trigger some changes in your hormones and then would deter weight loss, especially when you don't get enough sleep regularly. Also, if you have acid reflux, laying down while your stomach is full can exacerbate it and then will make it even harder to sleep.

Foods to Eat to Lose Weight

Now that you know when to eat your meal at each time of the day, you might want to know what kind of food you should eat while on your diet. The first food you should know that will help your diet is eggs. Eggs are simple to make, and you can create different dishes with them. Eggs are crucial for weight loss since researchers found that eggs could increase the feeling of fullness in 4 hours after you eat them.

Fish is another type of food you should try in your diet process. Fish has healthy fats, high quality protein and other very important nutrients. The combination fish has would keep you full, and then would really help you to manage your weight. Fish also has a good amount of iodine which is crucial for maintaining your metabolism and thyroid function.

Being on a diet doesn't mean you are not allowed to eat meat. Red meats and chicken breast are packed with iron and protein with less saturated fats compared to other types of meats. These qualities would really help you to stay full and healthy while trying to lose weight. But it's important to remember don't eat these lean meats too much and choose the right cooking methods like avoiding frying them to prevent any negative effects on your health.

Next, potatoes and other kinds of root vegetables would also help you on your diet because they have several great properties. The most recommended way to prepare potatoes is by boiling them to get the highest amount of resistant starch which will help your weight loss. You can also bake or roast your potatoes to make them not boring, just remember never to fry them.

Those are the things that you should know in order to help you lose some weight on your diet, including the ideal time to eat at night to lose weight. Remember that diet doesn't mean you need to eat as little as possible because you would still need the basic nutrients in order to stay healthy.