Many nutritionists and dietitians suggest having dinner around 6 PM to 7 PM and not to eat anything after that. Do you think it works practically? Can many people stick to this plan and how much weight can we lose with this routine? Here is the reason why we should follow this routine to be healthy and fit.
As we all know that metabolism is a process or rate of converting food into energy and calories. This metabolism process can be slowed down with the help of different food and exercises. When we eat food at regular intervals our metabolism rate gets fastened and digests the food faster. People with fast metabolism face weight loss. When our body doesn’t get food at regular intervals, we feel hungry and our metabolism rate slow down and also slow down the calorie burning rate. Exercising and other activities increase the metabolism by burning calories, our muscles in the body also increase the rate of metabolism.
Fasten your metabolism
Our body’s metabolism rate gets affected by factors like
- Quality of food we consume or have
- Time intervals between the meals
- Regular physical activity done by us
A snack that we eat in the evenings takes almost 2 hours to digest and the regular meal we eat may take 4 hours to digest. Our physical activity rate decreases at nights and also our metabolic rate.
We have different eating habits with different timings and also different lifestyle. In this scenario will having dinner at 7 PM work for us? Usually we Indians like to have light snacks in the evening and have dinner around 8-9 PM. People who will have early dinner around 7-8PM skip the snacks. To understand the situation let us think if one have dinner at 7PM and should go to sleep by 9-10PM, then he will have the next meal or breakfast next day around 8-9 PM in the morning. The gap between the meals i.e. dinner and next day breakfast is 12-14 hrs which can slow down the metabolism. Slow metabolism instead of burning calories starts storing extra calories.
Do’s and Dont’s
- Plan light and simple meal for dinner
- Have less meals or keep away starchy foods
- Plan your meals 2 hours before going to sleep, avoid late night snacks.
- Know the importance of exercise to lose weight and stay healthy
- By planning healthy diet and physical exercise, an individual can lose 1 Kg in a week.