Healthy diet and healthy weight enjoy a strong relationship. Everyone knows that in order to stay fit and healthy, what you eat is of utmost significance. However, that is not the only principle of healthy diet that you should be following.
The time at which you eat your meals is also extremely crucial, and often ignored by most of us. While at times circumstances are such that regular mealtimes become difficult; busy work schedule, hectic college life etc. all contribute towards this mayhem where one is unable to take proper and regular meals.
Moreover, many of the people and especially students have to work late into night and thus end up sleeping in the wee hours of morning. Necessity notwithstanding, this habit leads to all sorts of complications; such people also have to rush to the best General physician in Islamabad as they tend to suffer from GERD. Eating before going to bed, especially heavy and greasy meals like pizza can cause acid reflux which leads to extreme discomfort. But that’s not all!
The relationship between meal and its timing
Circadian rhythm is a wonderous thing. The entire planet abides by it, and human bodies are no exception. With sun rise should the body wake up, and nights are solely for sleeping. Any disturbance of the pattern naturally yields unwanted consequences, weight issues being one of the most significant ones.
Meal timings are important because of the relative connection between your brain and the body clock. It perceives ‘day-time’ as the active period, where your metabolism is working, and you are physically active. Nights are associated with less activity and fasting.
These perceptions then influence the way that your body reacts to food.
If you don’t eat at the right time, you risk weight gain
Most diets and weight loss regimens focus on portion control, increased activity or decreased calorie intake. However, such paradigms fail to account for the most important principle of the timing of food.
When you do not coordinate your diet with your body’s clock, you fundamentally change body’s response to the food being consumed. Then, even if you eat little, all those calories are going to count. However, when you eat being mindful of the time of the day, you control the calorie storage and the reaction of the body to the calories.
When you eat during the day, your body burns more calories in processing this food than it would during the night. Another important point is that when you eat during the day and the night, you increase the time for food consumption. As fat burning occurs only when organs realize no more food is going to be consumed, our day-night food consumption therefore decrease the fat-burning scope.
Furthermore, people who eat at the right time have greater chances of losing weight as well. According to BBC, those who consume most calories during breakfast are 2.5 times more likely to lose weight than those who take light breakfast.
Also, lack of discipline for mealtimes also disturbs other systems in the body. When you eat through the night at the expense of sleep, you are also then depriving body of proper shuteye which too leads to weight gain. Enter; vicious cycle!
With weight gain, comes the plethora of problems
Weight may just be a number, but its significance in the life of the person is immense. Being overweight or obese is akin to a ticking time bomb, such is the extent of the complications it results in.
People who are overweight run the risk of hypertension, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, cancer, infertility, stroke, sleep disorders etc. Moreover, people who are obese are also ostracized by the society which has a deep impact of their psychological health. It is also difficult for them to have social relationships.
Obese and overweight people also suffer from self-esteem issues. In a world where being thin is coveted, overweight people have an even harder time surviving. Many clothing stores don’t carry size, they cannot fit into compact cars, their workspace has to account for their plus-size. Even the most banal things become difficult for them.
Moreover, mobility is a big issue for them, as they cannot fit into many public spaces. Morbidly obese people need special bariatric wards as the normal equipment cannot sustain them. Medical procedures like surgery are very difficult for them, and their risk factor thus multiples greatly during the operation and the post-op care.
Suffice to say, with obesity come issues that corrode at the physical and the mental health and require almost constant visits to the top General physician in Lahore, as the problems are endless. Rather than making ever system of the body suffer, make better dietary choices; know that you have to prioritize your physical and mental health just as you would your work or university life!
