Meal timing & macronutrient distributions

[sirtuin]

I'm curious if there is an "optimal" (or less unhealthy?) way to distribute meals and macro-nutrients across the day.  I'd love to hear any ideas on how these can be manipulated for potential health / longevity / cognitive benefits.

 

Currently, I wake up around 7 or 8am, and breakfast is often around 11am.  Lunch falls around 2pm.  And dinner is around 6pm.  This gives me an 8 hour eating window, with a 16hr fasting period.  Often, I do fats primarily for breakfast (nuts / seeds / avocado / extra dark chocolate / salad greens + olive oil), where the bulk of any insulinogenic action falls in a fairly narrow 4 hour window.

 

I've noticed my fasting glucose is usually in the high 70's to low 80's, while a high carb meal elevates this into the high 90's (potentially with a spike just over 120 mg/dL for 30-60 minutes.)  The more carbohydrates that I put into this meal, the longer glucose seems to stay elevated in the high 90's.  At <100g carbohydrates in a meal, glucose is often back into the low 80's just 1 hour after finishing the meal (especially if this meal follows heavy resistance training.)  I have not looked into elevations in triglycerides after meals.

 

I'm wondering if my high fat meals might negatively affect arterial flow, and if I would be better eating more carbohydrates with those meals (combining carbs + fats), which might also lower post-prandial glucose.  Or, if I would be better eating several meals throughout the day.  Or, perhaps if I would be better working out before carbohydrate-rich meals (daily?) or after carbohydrate-rich meals (daily?)  I'm not sure if it's unwise to put heavy exercise soon after a high-fat meal, or if that's a healthy habit to lower post-prandial triglycerides.  I've also heard mention of a large gap between breakfast and dinner, which provides 2 smaller fasts per day, or a single meal (feast?) across a 2-4hr eating window.

 

I assume these small details might not matter too much compared with caloric restriction itself, but I am curious to hear opinions on the theoretical effects of such fine-tunings.

Edited November 2, 2015 by sirtuin

[corybroo]

Skipping breakfast and late dinner may be linked with higher risk of proteinuria

researchers from Kanazawa University found out that skipping breakfast and late dinner might be associated with a higher risk of proteinuria which is a key prognostic factor of CKD.

The researchers conducted a retrospective study, in which they investigated over 26,000 patients aged >40 years who underwent annual medical check-ups in Kanazawa between 1998 and 2014. Unhealthy dietary habits were defined as follows: late dinner (eating dinner within 2 h of going to bed at a frequency of three or more times a week); skipping breakfast (three or more times a week); quick eating (eating faster than people of the same age group); and late evening snack (eating snacks after dinner three or more times a week).

Quick eating (29%) was the most common unhealthy dietary habit in the whole patient population, followed by late dinner (19%), late evening snack (16%), and skipping breakfast (9%). During an average follow-up period of over 3 years, 10% of patients developed proteinuria. Of these dietary habits, skipping breakfast and late dinner were associated with an increased risk of developing proteinuria. Surprisingly, unhealthy dietary habits were not associated with changes in body weight.

[Ron Put]

On 11/9/2020 at 11:11 AM, corybroo said:

skipping breakfast and late dinner might be associated with a higher risk of proteinuria

No mention of what the subjects' diets were.... Which IMHO would impact health more than many of the included criteria, which may or may not be meaningful.

 

Edited November 10, 2020 by Ron Put