Word Of Wisdom Diet Plan

It’s all in the TIMING: Eating in sync with your body clock could help you shed pounds Here’s how.
    From carb counting to sugar busting, virtually all popular diets focus on which foods you should eat if you want to win the weight loss battle. But more and more research is finding that when you eat, not just what’s on your plate, might be another key weapon. The reason: Eating in sync with your internal body clock that regulates 100 body functions, including sleep and temperature may help your cut back on calories. Want to ad meal timing to your arsenal? The experts have three recommendations.

1. Fill up in the a. m.   Ever notice that a big breakfast will hold you for hours, but not long after a huge dinner you’re hankering for a snack? One study suggests why: Morning meals are more satisfying. Breakfast, it seems makes you fuller than either lunch or dinner. John M. de Castro, Ph.D., a University of Texas at EI Paso psychology professor who has been researching eating patterns for decades, made the discovery when he analyzed weeklong diet diaries kept by nearly 900 men and women. His study, published in The journal of Nutrition, found that when people ate more at breakfast, they consumed fewer calories, by day’s end “That doesn’t intuitively make sense,” de Castro concedes. “You’d expect if you eat more to stat the day. You’ll have eaten more by the end of the day. “But that kind of thinking does not account for how meal timing affects hunger.
    According to de Castro,  people put off eating again for longer stretches following breakfast then after any other meal they’re not as hungry after a morning plate of eggs, toast, and yogurt, say, then after a lunchtime chicken salad sandwich. On average, study subjects ate lunch 41/2 hours after breakfast but grabbed a snack only 2 hours  after lunch. And just 90 minutes after that, they went hunting for more food.
    It’s not clear why breakfast has this power, but de Castro speculates that your circadian rhythms, or internal clock, may be the key. He notes that for centuries, people rose with the sun and hit the pillow at nightfall. Humans, he says may be hardwired to find food more filling in the AM, knowing that a day’s work is ahead. By dusk, that impulse may disappear because your body, going on historical cues expects to be sleeping. “The problem is that nature didn’t anticipate the electric light bulb,” de Castro says. So  nowadays after sundown, electricity gives you ample time to chow down on chips, cookies, and ice cream and none of these are particularly satiating. That kind of snacking might even lead to obesity if it deteriorates  into night eating syndrome, in which sufferers often load up on sugary and starchy foods, consuming half their daily calories after dinner. Fill up in the morning, de Castro’s research suggests, and you might find it easier to skip those nighttime snacks.

 2. But forcing breakfast may be as bad as skipping it.   No two people want to eat at the same time, because their internal clocks are different. David Katz, M. D., M. P. H., director of the Yale Griffin Prevention Research Center and author of The Way to Eat: A Six Step Path to Lifelong Weight Control, has worked with overweight patients who forced themselves to eat breakfast after rising at 6 a. m., even though they weren’t hungry. They were well aware of studies showing that 9 out of 10 people who lose weight and keep it off eat breakfast. But that’s not what happened. These folks got hunger pangs by 9 s. m., and then ate a second breakfast, thwarting their efforts to shed pounds.
    An early meal could throw off the natural rhythm of your huger, which is driven by hormones, sleep patterns, and other factors, Katz explains. He  has studied weight problems for 15 years and often eats breakfast after 11 AM simply because that feels right. “I listen to my hunger and suggest others do the same,” Katz says.

3. Turn the  TV off while you eat.   Researchers have long known that people who watch a lot of television tend to weigh more and have more body fat. Research by de Castro hints at an explanation: Dining with the TV on may upset your eating patterns in unexpected ways, causing you to eat more frequently and when you’re less hungry. In a study published in the journal Appetite, de Castro asked 78 college students to keep a record of what they ate and when they watched TV over 7 days. Their average daily calories intake jumped 8 per cent, from 1,742 to 1,882 on days when they munched with the TV humming enough to pack on an extra pound every 31/2 weeks. Circadian rhythms may be at work here too, because most people watch television at night, when they are less likely to realize that they’re full.