Mark Bell's Power Project - Power Bite: Why Meal Timing Is More Important Than You Think ft. Dr. IDZ

Starting point is 00:00:00 It all points to the fact that meal timing is actually very important. Power Project family, this is a Power Byte. And a Power Byte is a highlight from a full-length episode that we do not want you to miss. Links to the full episode are in the podcast show notes, along with special perks for all of our beautiful listeners. Enjoy. So when we look at all of the evidence, whether it's weight management, whether it's, you know, cardiometabolic risk factors, an amazing review in 2020, by Hassan Dashti, I think, points out that night eating or close to your circadian night, having a large amount of calories, actually increases your risk of cardiometabolic disorders. And when people want

Starting point is 00:00:42 to lose weight, or when they, you know or when people start a weight loss diet, or they start a new, they want to make a change and they want to stick to it, they found that people that consume more calories in the evening, they are much more likely to fail trying to lose weight or fail an intervention than those that shift their calories earlier in the day. than those that shift their calories earlier in the day. That's a very, very interesting point because most people would say, oh, as long as I'm eating my 1600 calories, or as long as I'm having my 1800, I'll be in a calorie deficit and I'll be completely fine.

Starting point is 00:01:20 Yes, you will be fine if you actually stuck to that. But the point is that you're less likely to succeed if the majority of your calories are later in the day for the many reasons that we've discussed such as the physiological effects we're not as um efficient as metabolizing nutrients in the night we have poorer glucose tolerance there's evidence that the thermic effect is reduced in the night and you've got the issue it of you mark mentioned earlier that oh if i go for go for a mile jog or a mile run on one day, but then I change the time I go for that same exercise later in the day, another day, how does that affect us? Well, if you're consuming most of your energy later in the day, then how are you going to have a sufficient exercise routine or sufficient regime? If you're exercising mostly in the morning

Starting point is 00:02:05 or the afternoon. You need to sufficiently fuel your body if you want to reap the benefits of your exercise protocol, right? So if you're having the majority of your energy later in the day, you're not actually making the most use of it because you're going to feel more lethargic, your general steps and your general movement will be reduced earlier in the day. And there's lots of evidence showing that later in the day, you desire and you crave more hyperpalatable foods. So foods that are calorie rich. I don't know.

Starting point is 00:02:37 I'm sure you guys have. You're big guys. Gym is part of your life. And you may have a hard, stressful day at work, or you may have had a very, very tiring session. And you go back and you've got access to candy, to sweets, to biscuits, to peanut butter. And you just think, you know what, I just need something calorie dense. And I want to just eat it all in one go. That craving is often associated with later in the day. And that never really happens earlier,

Starting point is 00:03:05 because, you know, most of us should be focusing on the whole satiating foods, right? So there's some of the effects when you look at meal timing, which is often not, it's not mentioned as being important, but it actually is important. And if we look at weight management, there's a good few controlled studies, 2013, there's one in 2020 as well. And there are a couple others that show that when calories are matched, shifting your calories earlier in the day can lead to greater outcomes in weight loss. So one study found, I think, over 12 weeks, an additional 2.5 kilograms, which is about, you know, six pounds, six and a half pounds additional weight loss. Another study, which of course, was based on, you know, dietitian kind of review and, you know,

Starting point is 00:03:56 making sure they're sticking to their diet. It's that there are limitations to that. But that's a whole nother, you know, that's a whole not other discussion. They found that they lost five kilograms more, so about 12 pounds or 11, 12 pounds more weight loss over a few months. So meal timing has a more significant effect on our health than people realize. And for those that argue that it doesn't have an effect, I say to them, well, where is the evidence? Because I've looked very, very hard, and there's actually not much to show that when you have your nutrients, it doesn't have any effect. The overall totality of evidence we have available right now shows that actually meal timing does affect our health. To what degree, we are still yet to find out,

Starting point is 00:04:45 you know, as the field of chrononutrition furthers and it expands. But I don't know where this whole notion of it doesn't matter when you eat, it's how much you eat. I genuinely don't understand where that came from because there's no evidence to actually support it. There's only a very, very small amount. And when you actually look at the overall literature and you conduct your own literature

Starting point is 00:05:05 reviews and you look at reviews by Yumin Hashandashi and you look at weight loss interventions, you look at dietary adherence, you look at cardiometabolic risk factors, it all points to the fact that meal timing is actually very important. Pat Project family, I don't want you guys to continue looking dusty in your old gym clothes. That's why we partner with Biore Clothing. You see, I'm guilty of not wanting to wear these gyms to work out because they feel so good. So you guys need to head over there and just go check them out. This is the Stratotec tee. It's so comfortable.

Starting point is 00:05:33 Oh, let me just let you guys out. Andrew, how can people get it? Yes, guys, you guys got to head over to Viore.com slash power project, V-U-O-R-I.comProject. Links to them down in the description below. Let's get back to the podcast. So now we've established that meal timing is important. Let's look at shift work. So people that are obligated to be up late at night, to eat late at night, like myself, other healthcare workers, construction workers, even people into business, how they run their

Starting point is 00:06:04 own companies. I'm sure you guys have found yourself working late at night a few days as well. You might be on your laptop, you might be researching things, you might be organizing the next week's worth of people that you're going to talk to and clients and etc. So what can we do to help mitigate some of the deleterious effects of circadian biology and going against our circadian rhythm. This is very interesting because, as we've mentioned, some of the major issues with going against our circadian biology is that you're not able to metabolize nutrients effectively, you're not able to regulate our blood sugar levels effectively. And the thermic effect is probably going to be lower. And that's going to have negative implications on our sleep.

Starting point is 00:06:52 So what can we eat? And what can we do in the night to help address or to help minimize the damage done by all of these different factors? There's only one real answer, really. And that is sticking to whole foods that are high in protein specifically, that you don't cause a massive surge in your blood sugar levels, you stick to low glycemic index foods, and foods that don't, you know, that have a low glycemic load. And you combine it with healthy fiber with some healthy fats, and you have small and frequent meals throughout the time in which you're forced to stay up. So that's probably a very useful piece of advice that we could do to mitigate the issues. Because if there's an issue with thermic effects, then we should really stock up on the things that increase the thermic effect the most. And we know that's protein. If we have issues with glucose regulation, and how well and

Starting point is 00:07:52 efficiently we can keep our blood sugar levels in the optimum range, well, then don't eat foods that are going to spike your sugars massively. Don't take a can of Coke, a full sugar Coke with you on a night shift. Like that's just not a sensible thing to do. And if you're looking at reduced fatty acid oxidation, which has been shown in a study in 2020 and also many other studies where they looked at snacking in the night compared to snacking in the day, they showed that post-consumption of that snack, you had lower levels of fatty acid oxidation and metabolization of fats um so if you want to mitigate that issue as well then just don't have things that are high in unhealthy fats

Starting point is 00:08:31 don't you know don't have things that are trans fatty that have been fried and you've got it from a takeaway you know that have high levels of saturated fat maybe minimize the you know meats that are very fatty and high calorific meats. Make sure they're lean and make sure you're having skinless chicken breast and turkey and get your lean cuts of red meat in there. against our circadian biology, you can then actually think about, okay, what do I need to eat in what quantities and how often do I need to eat them to help mitigate the effects that I now understand with eating at night or staying up late at night. So that's why I think it's important people realize what is actually happening in our body and why our utilization of nutrients has become less efficient in the night and then we can then address you know some

Starting point is 00:09:33 of the useful things that we've mentioned so far so sticking to high protein satiating whole foods you know in small amounts you know perhaps two three times across a night shift. Don't just have all of your calories in one go because your body is going to perhaps struggle with regulating everything in its normal place. That's probably the number one thing I'd say. The number two thing I'd say is that when you come to the end of that shift and daylight starts to come up and you're seeing the sunrise and you're still up and your body's thinking, what's going on? Is it day? Is it night? I feel tired, but it's daylight. Your body just gets quite confused sometimes, and that's completely fine. And that's a stressful environment in itself. So we need to do things that perhaps might reduce the levels

Starting point is 00:10:28 of cortisol in our body that might naturally increase the amount of melatonin or our sleep hormone that would perhaps prepare us for going to bed and trying to sleep and have a good sleep in the daytime. So I don't know if you're aware of these blue light glasses where they block the blue rays, right? People have said to me, they've said, oh, doc, you should really get these. I see you on night shifts all the time. You should get these when you're driving home so your body doesn't respond and doesn't become super awake again. And then you're lying in bed at 10 in the morning trying to go to sleep, realizing why you can't go to sleep.

Starting point is 00:11:08 Well, that's because our master clock, daylight, sunlight, nighttime is one of the major players. If you're going to expose yourself to bright daylight and allow the sun to hit your face, your body's just going to naturally feel like you should be waking up now. You shouldn't be feeling tired, your body is just going to naturally feel like you should

Starting point is 00:11:25 be waking up now. You shouldn't be feeling tired. You shouldn't be going to sleep. So there are these other things that you can do alongside trying to manage your stress levels, perhaps getting some low intensity walking around on your shift, perhaps try to release some dopamine, some serotonin, make you feel good, make you feel relaxed. Therefore, you increase the chance of you having a good sleep in the daytime, which can then help mitigate some of these metabolic issues that we've already discussed with the whole AM versus PM thing as well. So it's a very, nuanced topic and you know we could spend ages talking about it and um for those that haven't listened um you should also check out i think sigma nutrition podcast

Starting point is 00:12:13 they're a very very good nutrition podcast and they've done an episode on this i think with um alan as well alan flanagan is it i believe i think you guys you guys have had him right yes on the podcast yeah yeah so they so they cover some of these some of these tactics that you can use with kind of going against that normal circadian rhythm as well so i think that's all very very interesting um topics and for shift workers it's not good for my health it's not good for our health and you know met we are at a much higher risk of you know metabolic issues later in life we are at a much higher risk of, you know, metabolic issues later in life, we're at a much higher risk of, you know, becoming insulin resistant, you know, having cardiovascular

Starting point is 00:12:52 disease in the future. However, we can only do our best to, you know, mitigate these issues and mitigate the damage that we that we experience. And, you know, I'm not I'm not even that great at following my own advice. You know, more often than not, I've ordered food into the hospital. You know, I've gotten some nice Turkish food, some Lebanese food, I've got a nice chicken shawarma, you know, some, just some wholesome, just fatty, you know, I just want to feel satisfied sometimes, you know, if the shift is difficult, sometimes you don't care about what you know, you just care about feeling satisfied. So, you know, sometimes it's easier said than done.

Starting point is 00:13:27 And it really is. But hopefully this will help inform those people that find themselves up late at night to what things to really look out for. And hopefully we can mitigate some of these issues.

Mark Bell's Power Project - Power Bite: Why Meal Timing Is More Important Than You Think ft. Dr. IDZ

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