Is Your Eating Window Sabotaging Your Health?
When was the last time you thought about your “Eating Window”?
If you're like most people, you've probably never been told why your Eating Window is important, or how it affects your health, or how it can make a huge impact on your health, energy, and body composition.
TO CALCULATE YOUR EATING WINDOW, THINK BACK TO YESTERDAY - WHAT TIME WAS YOUR FIRST BITE AND WHAT TIME WAS YOUR LAST BITE OF FOOD?
IF YOU’RE LIKE MOST PEOPLE, THE AVERAGE EATING WINDOW IS BETWEEN 13 TO 16 HOURS PER DAY.
What's an Eating Window?
It’s simple - It’s the period of time per day when you eat food.
For example, if you eat your first meal at 7am, eat lunch, dinner and then have an evening snack at 10pm, your eating window is 15 hours in that 24 hour period.
Our bodies are meant to have periods of feeding and periods of fasting.
Our bodies were not meant to be digesting food 24 hours a day. Intuitively we know that. Animals know that and we see it in our pets, even the ones that are motivated by food!
We mess up our body’s internal clocks when we get it mixed up and have longer feeding periods than fasting periods.
Our muscles, tissues and organs get a mixed message when they are always receiving signals to stay active and digest the food we keep eating.
Our bodies get out of balance and as a result, we unknowingly sabotage our health.
Why is my Eating Window Important?
- Our circadian rhythm gets back into sync which improves our metabolic health and produces a ton more energy
- Improves our body composition (limits fat gain and preserves muscle)
- Reduces fatty liver
- Benefits brain health
- Maintains Gut integrity
- Improves mitochondrial function
- Improves glycemic control, insulin sensitivity (Whitten, Eat for Energy 2022)
Benefits of a smaller Eating Window:
As a standard, research indicates a 12 hour eating window is ideal for optimum health. For example, a 12 hour eating window is eating from 7am to 7pm (thus, no food before 7am or after 7pm). It’s also an amount of time that can fit easily into most people's lifestyles, thus making it great for long term health.
Some clinicians recommend a 8 or 10 hour eating window for people who are obese or overweight, as a simple strategy to improve body composition.
The most important choice is to find an Eating Window that feels good for you and one you can easily maintain long term.
Start with the 12 hour eating window and after 2-3 weeks reassess. If you want to keep closing the window, try an 8 or 10 hour eating window and see how it makes you feel and if it is easy to maintain with your lifestyle.
How long should one’s Eating Window be?
- You don’t have to change any of the foods you’re eating to start seeing benefits. This is why you can make this a permanent healthy lifestyle habit. However, what you may find is that once you get going, with the new level of energy and health you’ll notice, you will naturally start to make better decisions and aim for the 80/20 rule of nutrition. 80% of the time making healthy food choices and 20% of the time enjoying those foods that taste great but have limited nutrition value (you know, chocolate, cookies, fancy lattes, etc).
- It’s a health strategy that is easy to maintain and fits within any lifestyle. The goal is to have a 12 hour eating window which gives you flexibility that can fit into your busiest of days and also your weekends with those social events. For example, during the week you may find the easiest eating window for you is 7am to 7pm, but on the weekend a 9am to 9pm works for your social life!
- It’s the easy way to introduce yourself gradually to the benefits of Intermittent fasting. For the past 15 years I’ve been helping people improve their body composition, but some can’t get their head around Intermittent Fasting so they don’t even attempt it. Instead, starting with an Eating Window approach allows so many more people to see that they can not only do it, but they feel great and now they’re ready to consider a 24 hour fasting period.