Eating early is good for your health
Intermittent fasting has become a very popular way to keep track of your figure, because it allows you not to count every calorie, but simply to eat at certain hours. Most people pay attention only to the length of the pause between meals, often forgetting about the time of day. The staff of the National Taiwan University analyzed a lot of data and came to the conclusion that the diet schedule plays a crucial role. It turned out that the body does not care at all when you open the refrigerator. A publication in the journal BMJ Medicine confirms that postponing main meals for the first half of the day has a much better effect on metabolism than late dinners, even if the fasting intervals are observed equally strictly.
Limiting the time of meals really helps to improve metabolism compared to a regular diet. The analysis showed that people are more willing to adhere to such a regime than strict diets with constant calorie counting. This makes the technique accessible and feasible to perform in everyday life, where it is difficult to weigh every gram of food.
The main discovery is that not all fasting schedules are equally useful. Those who ate early in the morning or in the middle of the day received more health benefits than those who enjoyed late meals. Blood sugar, body weight, and heart health improved markedly more when food was ingested during daylight hours.
Interestingly, a simple reduction in meal time (for example, to 4-6 hours) it didn’t always give the best result. The combination of a late start of a meal and a long time interval for eating affected the body the worst.
These data confirm the principles of chrono-nutrition: our metabolism is subject to circadian rhythms. The body is better attuned to the digestion and assimilation of energy in the morning. Professor Lin-Wei Chen advises not just to look at the clock, but to try to shift all meals to an earlier time in order to get maximum results.
Published
February, 2026
Category
Medicine
Duration of reading
2-3 minutes
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Source
Scientific Journal BMJ Medicine. Article: Effects of timing and eating duration of time restricted eating on metabolic outcomes: systematic review and network meta-analysis
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