#122 Early Time Restricted Eating VS Eating Later in the Day

Siim Land (0:00)

You probably heard that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, and to prevent your body from going into starvation mode, you have to have at least six meals, and with very frequent snacks. If you've heard about the benefits of intermittent fasting and read some research about it, then you probably don't agree with that, and you actually skip meals quite frequently. But there's still a lot of controversy and conflict between eating earlier in the day or eating later in the day. It's another one of those popular sayings, eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a beggar, which basically tries to tell you that it's better to eat earlier in the morning because your body is more insulin sensitive and the food that you ate won't be stored as fat. Whereas if you eat late and you only eat dinner, then all those calories are immediately stored as body fat. Fat. Well, in this episode of the Body Mind Empowerment Podcast, I'm going to go deep into looking at time restricted eating, intermittent fasting and whether or not you should have your food earlier in the day or later. Body Mind Empowerment. Get stronger, faster, smarter, quicker, friendlier, more helpful, more driven. Everything the body needs. Control your mind.

Now, before I actually go into the research and science, then I have to clarify a few of the terms that are being used.

And there are quite a few terms and techniques used to describe fasting, intermittent fasting, alternate day fasting, extended fasting, just not eating, starving, time restricted eating and many others. But when I'm using terms like intermittent fasting and time restricted eating, then they can mean the same thing in some instances, but they are actually somewhat different and they have their own nuances. Time restricted eating or time restricted feeding, DRF, refers to eating within a certain time frame in the 24-hour period.

Early time restricted feeding would be eating in the earlier parts of the day, somewhere between 8 a.m. until 2 p.m.

Late time restricted feeding would be eating in the later parts of the day, between 2 p.m. and 10 p.m. Intermittent fasting or IF is more like cycling between eating and not eating, which can apply to alternate day fasting, eating one day and fasting the next day, extended fasting for three to five days, as well as it can also include daily time restricted feeding. In reality, anyone who's doing OMAD one meal a day, 16 and 8 fasting or the Warrior diet, then they're actually doing time restricted feeding, but it can be still categorized as a sub group for IF. The difference between them is just a matter of degree, and it's just like terminology. It doesn't matter which one you use. Time restricted feeding itself emerged as a concept within the context of circadian rhythms. In 2017, three scientists, Jeffrey C. Hall, Michael Rosbash and Michael W. Young, they were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the Discoveries of Molecular Mechanisms Controlling the Circadian Rhythm. In regards to health and nutrition, circadian rhythms play an immense role. They're going to dictate what kind of physiological processes to commence and which hormonal patterns to follow. The master clock is very connected to nutrient sensing pathways that detect the presence of calories and food. That's why it's a vital component to the regulation of autophagy, growth hormone, fat loss, insulin sensitivity, muscle growth and much more. Dr. Sachin Panda, who is a professor at the Salk Institute and an expert in circadian rhythms, recommends people to eat their food within a minimum of 8 to 10 hours. During fasting, the gut and immune system have then enough time to repair themselves and conduct other autophagy processes. Dr. Panda's research has found that the average person eats over a 15-hour period, starting with a drop of milk in their morning coffee and ending with a late-night snack of some nuts or some chips. That's quite crazy when you think about it. Most people in the modern world spend virtually their entire day in a fated state, because although they may be going through an overnight fast of 8 to 10 hours, their body is still in a fated state because it takes time for your body to fully digest the food that you ate before it can go into a state of autophagy and fasting. So that's why anything less than 14 or 16 hours of fasting a day isn't actual fasting, because you're not going into a fated state. If you're eating more frequently than within a 12-hour period, then you're not even doing any form of time-restricted feeding, and that has been shown to have quite a few negative effects on your metabolic health, glycemic control, and many others. Intermittent fasting has been shown to have many benefits, such as reduced blood pressure, lower blood sugar and insulin, decreased triglycerides, and improved metabolic health in general. It's also an effective weight loss method. Time-restricted feeding without reducing calorie intake prevents obesity and metabolic syndrome in mice who are fed a junk food diet. Dr. Sajjan Panda took two groups of mice and put them on an obesogenic diet that was supposed to make them fat. One group of mice ate normally with no time restrictions within a 24-hour period, and the other one fasted for 16 hours and ate within 8 hours. The mice who ate regularly with no time restrictions and snacked developed diabetes, hypertension, high cholesterol and inflammation. Those who ate the same amount of food but within a smaller timeframe gained significantly less fat, had lower cholesterol and better blood sugar. I'll leave a link to the full article about this in the show notes, and you can actually see many different pictures of these fat mice and lean mice. And the difference between them is that one was just fasting and the other one didn't fast it, although they ate the same amount of calories. There's also a lot of evidence to show that time restricted feeding is beneficial in humans beyond for just weight loss. It can prevent the development of cardiovascular disease and improves glucose control throughout the day. A study on prediabetic men showed that eating the same amount of food within six hours of time restricted feeding improved glycemic control, insulin sensitivity, blood pressure and oxidative stress compared to eating that same food within a 12 hour window. Another study took resistance trained men on the same lifting routine and put one group on a 12 hour eating window and the other one on the 16 and 8 method with 16 hours of fasting and 8 hours of eating. Both groups saw small improvements in strength and muscle growth, but the 16 and 8 group lost more body fat. They lost on average 1.6 kg versus the 0.3 kg of the group that was eating within 12 hours. The fasting group also had lower levels of inflammation. The physiological benefits of time restricted eating come from the suppression of insulin, improved glucose control, reduced inflammation, increased autophagy and spending more time in a fasted state. That allows the body to induce autophagy and self-repair more easily. So regardless of what kind of a diet you follow or what kind of foods you choose to eat, time restricted eating and intermittent fasting is probably the most effective and the healthiest dietary strategy you can do. You can even be very healthy, lose weight, have perfect biomarkers, even when eating a junk food diet with McDonald's and stuff, as long as you're doing intermittent fasting. Likewise, you can be eating the perfect diet with only organic ingredients, highest quality foods and still have poor health because you're eating too frequently and you're not even going into a fasted state. Fasting and autophagy are that powerful.