Time your meals right
• Develop an intentional approach to eating, focusing on the timing and frequency of meals and snacks
• Distribute calories over a defined portion of the day
• Eat a greater share of the total calorie intake earlier in the day
• Avoid late night snacks
• Plan meals and snacks throughout the day to help manage hunger
Source: American Heart Association
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Updated 12 hours ago
There's more evidence backing the premise that breakfast is the most important meal of the day.
Skipping that meal might be bad for your long-term health, according to a report released last week by the American Heart Association.
Consuming more calories earlier in the day and less food at night can help reduce the potential for a heart attack, stroke or other cardiac-related illnesses, according to the report.
“The decline in breakfast has paralleled the increase in obesity prevalence,” the AHA wrote in the scientific journal Circulation.
Studies have found people who eat breakfast daily are less likely to have high cholesterol and blood pressure, and people who skip breakfast — as many as 30 percent of American adults — are more likely to be overweight, have inadequate nutrition, or be diagnosed with diabetes, the AHA said.
“Meal timing may affect health due to its impact on the body's internal clock,” said the report's author, Marie-Pierre St-Onge, a nutrition researcher at Columbia University Medical Center in New York. “In animal studies, it appears that when animals receive food while in an inactive phase, such as when they are sleeping, their internal clocks are reset in a way that can alter nutrient metabolism. However, more research would need to be done in humans before that can be stated as a fact.”
Timing meals is indeed a key to overall health, said Nonnie Toth, a nutritionist and dietary counselor at Allegheny General Hospital's Cardiovascular Institute.
“Skipping breakfast makes you hungrier,” she said. “Eating larger meals later in the day will make blood sugar surge, paving the way for diabetes, weight gain and high blood pressure. Your body will start trying to make up for what it originally needed at breakfast.
Tom Hritz, a clinical nutrition manager at Magee-Womens Hospital of UPMC and UPMC Mercy, conducted his own study on breakfast skipping while working on his dissertation six years ago.
Hritz did not find a major association between skipping the first meal and weight loss, but agreed that a healthy breakfast can improve cardiovascular health.
Toth estimated about half of her patients skip breakfast on a regular basis.
“It's the biggest mistake people can make each day,” she said. “With our busy lifestyles, we've gotten away from what is important. This kind of creates a snowball effect in which people are eating bigger portions when they eat.”
The AHA presented several definitions of breakfast as the first meal of the day eaten before or at the start of daily activities, generally before 10 a.m.
Meal timing has a direct effect on the body's internal clock, Toth said.
“A lot of times, people need a plan,” she said. “Writing down what you have eaten and what you plan to eat is helpful, sort of a food journal.”
For those on the go, Toth recommended several breakfast options: oatmeal paired with a protein like walnuts; a whole wheat pita stuffed with hardboiled egg and shredded cheese, a homemade smoothie or lowfat yogurt with blueberries.
An overall healthy diet should consist of fruits and vegetables, whole grains, fish and poultry and low-fat dairy. Occasional lean meats are also acceptable forms of protein. Eating well also means cutting back on salt and foods high in sugars.
“We suggest eating mindfully, by paying attention to planning both what you eat and when you eat meals and snacks, to combat emotional eating,” St-Onge said. “Many people find that emotions can trigger eating episodes when they are not hungry, which often leads to eating too many calories from foods that have low nutritional value.”
Between 1971 and 2010, the percentage of men who ate three square meals a day decreased from 73 percent in the 1970s to 59 percent in 2010, researchers noted. While 75 percent of women said they ate three meals a day in the 1970s, by 2010 just 63 percent did.
Hritz agreed that those who schedule their meals and keep a journal can improve their health in many ways.
“There's plenty of research out there that the key to losing weight and keeping it off comes with keeping a journal,” he said. “It can get tedious but those who are more successful with weight loss track their meals every day.”
Ben Schmitt is a Tribune-Review staff writer. Reach him at 412-320-7991 or bschmitt@tribweb.com.
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