Village Matters

Why it’s Important to Stick to Timings for Weight Management

by Michelle Whearty, One 2 One Waist Management 

We have all heard the saying ‘Breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and sup like a pauper”. There is a lot of science behind it. 

Much of weight management is to do with our “Biological Rhythm”, and no it’s noth-ing to do with dancing! The body needs to use certain kinds of fuel (fat, sugar) during the day. During evolution, our bodies have worked at their optimum in terms of digest-ing food/drinks etc when we are active and when it is light outside. 

So the flip side of that is what happens when you eat and drink at the moment your body is expecting you to be resting/sleeping and it is dark? It can seriously disrupt your internal systems and compromise metabo-lism. Your body does not process the intake and it stores fat. Irregular eating patterns have also been associated to lead to obesity, Type 2 Diabetes, and Cardiovascular Dis-ease. 

But you can change this. Many scientific studies have shown that when a consistent daily cycle of eating and fasting is adopted, it creates and nurtures a healthy circadian rhythm (the natural internal process regulat-ing sleep/wake cycle), optimises your metabolism and gives long term health benefits. 

When combined with the calorie re-strictions personalised to you in your pre-scription, this put’s your body into optimum fat burning mode consistently. 

So you can see why it’s important to follow your prescription during the weight loss part of your journey! But what about when you reach your “Healthy Green Body” and move into the maintenance stage? The sim-ple answer is you CARRY ON following the timings. Which is why I say from Day 1 of your journey that this is a plan that will last you a lifetime, not a diet that starts and stops. 

With the One2One plan, I encourage you to follow time restricted fuelling/eating. It is a well-researched meal timing strategy that involves eating and drinking all of your daily calories within a consistent 8-12 hour period, at regular daily intervals. I have used my years in the medical field, my in-depth knowledge of the One2One plan and this research to create a program that con-sistently works when followed adhering to timings. 

In my experience, those clients that have continued to follow their specific “time related fuellings” (TRF) have maintained their losses. It improves and stabilises your metabolism, as well as your cardiovascular health through optimising your circadian clock function. Scientific studies have also found it lowers blood pressure, improves blood sugar levels, helps increase energy levels, and better sleep patterns. 

Studies have found that eating close to the time when levels of the sleep hormone mel-atonin start to rise (ie before bedtime), is associated with having more body fat! So your prescriptions with One2One don’t rec-ommend eating after 8pm. In a randomised weight-loss study, women with obesity who ate earlier in the day lost more weight. In a smaller study in adults it found that late-night eating increases blood sugar levels after the meal and the following day, which impact your body negatively. Following the circadian method it prepares the body to be more efficient at digesting, absorbing, and metabolising food earlier in the day. 

Since melatonin (which is released at night) reduces insulin release, the body is not able to process glucose properly when you eat late at night or very early in the morning when melatonin is high! So eating meals first thing in the day and avoiding food for a few hours prior to bedtime does have di-rect physical health benefits for your meta-bolic body.