Circadian Rythm and eating when lights out

[RPDiciple]

Hello

I know RP has talked about its best to eat when the lights out and other has mentioned that before in many books, but many of them has not had many scientific backing.

I know there is a book coming out that will be talking alot about this from Ari Whitten "the metabolic spesialist" :p and Børge Fagerli.

They talk about how important it is to eat breakfast and lunch as the biggest meals and light dinner/evening meal.

He talked about how it made the circadian rythm alot better in terms of sleep cycle, hormones regulated alot better and appetite regulated so that people that wanted to loose weight had alot easier time becasuse their appetite got regulated alot more normaly. They also talked about alot of benefits from increased NEAT so you got alot more energy and spontainous activity. You just wanted to move more and the results waas great and they had alot of research to back it up with amazing results.

Would be fun to hear if any of you have experienced with something similar and also if haidut or other of the geeks here has dvelved into the research about it would be great

 

[jyb]

With regard to protein, it does make sense. It takes time digest a large protein meal, I think cheese for example sits in the stomach for many hours. What happens with regard to digestion at night? I guess digestion becomes less efficient, so either you go to bed feeling a bit heavy in your stomach, or you get undigested protein going through. Undigested protein is pretty bad stuff it seems (effects of undigested gluten, whey, collagen...all sorts of anecdotes). At night, metabolism slows (should be pretty obvious from the body temperature drop) so your tryptophan is prone to serotonin conversion (metabolism is a key factor, according to Peat). Haidut has also posted a study showing protein is better used when eating earlier in the day. That's for protein, but otherwise I personally have no problem with sugar or gigantic amounts of pure fats at night.

 

[Dean]

Peat definitely recommends getting most of your protein early in the day, most of your fat late in the day. Carbs obviously you need throughout the day, but higher percentage carb meals later in the day. Pretty sure I remember him saying that if you are going to eat starch, it's best to do it later in the day. Not sure how that fits with the premise that digestion slows at night, but...

The protein thing certainly has born out In my own personal experience. Too much protein, too late makes it much harder for me to get to sleep and stay asleep.

 

[Mittir]

I remember reading an interesting study which measured secretion of gastric juice
while eating dinner under incandescent and fluorescent light. They found there
were more gastric juice under incandescent light. To me this kind of explain why we have
better digestion during day time. Bright light lowers cortisol level after sunset and
cortisol weakens digestion.

Excess tryptophan before bed time causes sleep problem, probably by increasing
serotonin. That is probably why RP recommends gelatin before bed for better sleep.

 

[tara]

I strongly recognise this.

I live in a country where it is common for people to eat lightly for breakfast and lunch, and a main meal at dinner time. I think I've spent a lot of my life hungry and tired because of this.
Then in my 30s I spent a while living and working in a place where it was normal for my workmates to go out together for a good hot main meal at lunchtime, often at 11:30am or even earlier. This suited me really well.
But it wasn't till I read about RBTI and tried to follow this pattern more deliberately that I got how crucial it was for me.

Now I can usually organise myself to eat my highest protein meal at lunchtime, I eat one or two breakfasts including protein and sugar, but don't crave fats early, and then I snack a lot between breakfast and lunch. I still snack in the afternoon, but my dinner is lighter in protein, and I can go for a while between snacks in the afternoon, as long as I've loaded up well in the morning. I'm more likely to crave fat and starch later in the day. By evening I can be tempted by pure butter, but not in the morning.
If I eat a lot in the morning, I'm pretty sure my NEAT is higher, along with my energy, enthusiasm and general resilience for everything.

If I don't get enough food in before about 1pm, there is nothing I can do in the afternoon that really makes up for it - it can ruin the day, even if I try to catch up with more food later.

PS. Starch at dinner does not go with RBTI, but I like them anyway.

 

[BingDing]

IYDK, NEAT probably means Non-exercise activity thermogenesis. An interesting line from that abstract

NEAT increases with overfeeding and decreases with underfeeding

 

[RPDiciple]

IYDK, NEAT probably means Non-exercise activity thermogenesis. An interesting line from that abstract

NEAT increases with overfeeding and decreases with underfeeding

Sure NEAT increases with overfeeding but so does fat gain so then it does not matter. Im talking about using it so that one increases NEAT without increasing calories wich can lead to fat loss for those that want that.

 

[Parsifal]

Peat definitely recommends getting most of your protein early in the day, most of your fat late in the day. Carbs obviously you need throughout the day, but higher percentage carb meals later in the day. Pretty sure I remember him saying that if you are going to eat starch, it's best to do it later in the day. Not sure how that fits with the premise that digestion slows at night, but...

The protein thing certainly has born out In my own personal experience. Too much protein, too late makes it much harder for me to get to sleep and stay asleep.

That's crazy because I've read the opposite thing about circadian chemistry, that high protein for the last meal of the day is good because it will stop glucagon and make it easier to go to sleep without being hungry.
And that you must stop eating 4 hours before going to bed so that the liver stop working to be able to make the brain hormones and signaling work better .

 

[Parsifal]

I'm also wondering if the infrared light at night will not perturb our circadian rythms in some way?