The Truth About Meal Timing and Your Metabolism

Welcome to the Biohack Method. I am Lindsey Burwell. I break down the science, cut the fluff and give you real tools to optimize your body with peptides, transdermal patches and root cause biohacking that actually works.

Hey. Oh my gosh. I am so excited. I just got off the phone with my manufacturer and supplement formulator and the new patches are literally being shipped this week. This is our biggest drop to date because we are dropping not one, but two new patches. So I'm just like on literally cloud nine, super, super excited, but even more excited to chat about metabolism and what is the best time to eat to really rev up and boost metabolism. Like for example, is it better to skip breakfast or skip dinner? I get this question all the time. I'll meet with women and we're looking at their metabolic scan and we're seeing, okay, definitely sugar metabolism. And it's an issue. Inflammation is an issue. And we're going over what they're currently eating, what their lifestyle is like, and they'll say, you know, I'm eating a little bit for breakfast, or I'm not eating anything for breakfast. This is what I'm eating for dinner. And everything looks so perfect on paper. And it's like, okay, but why are you not tapping into fat stores for energy? Why do you not have that metabolic flexibility to switch between sugar burning and fat burning? And the craziest thing is that sometimes it's in the little details that really will turn on metabolism or turn it off, like the timing in which you eat. There is a perfect time to eat where your metabolism is maximized and your cortisol is high and your melatonin is low. And so we want to talk about what that looks like and how you can implement these very simple steps into your daily routine, which will make huge, huge, huge, huge shifts in your metabolism. So let's talk about what that looks like. So we're going to really dive into circadian rhythm. I'm sure you've probably heard this word, but really it is the hidden key to metabolic health. So think of it this way. Your body runs on a 24 hour clock, right? That is what is called your Circadian rhythm. There's 24 hours in a day and your body literally runs off that clock. So it, it regulates everything within that time frame. So cortisol is going to spike in the morning and that is what is supposed to wake you up. That is a good thing. We want cortisol to be high in the morning and low at night, where we See, issues is if cortisol was low in the morning, right? That could be adrenal burnout. And then we really want melatonin really to start increasing at night. Obviously, that is the hormone that's going to help us get to sleep and stay asleep, really help us to wind down. And then insulin throughout the day to manage blood sugar, right? So we want balanced insulin. That's another hormone that really helps us to balance our blood sugar, get into the fat burn. And so it's those three hormones and the synchronicity of those within a 24 hour period is where we can kind of start dialing in the timing of what we're eating to really maximize that fat burn. So when I want you to really think of it this way. So daytime is your burn phase, okay? In the morning when cortisol is high, that's when we go into fat burn. Nighttime is our repair phase. So we want to start shutting things down at night and get into that repair air, autophagy, cleanup, rest mode. So when it's light outside, when you wake up and the sun is coming up, your metabolism literally turns on. Okay? Digestion is super strong. Insulin sensitivity is high, meaning when you do eat and glucose does go up, the hormone insulin is sensitive. It's ready to go, and it's going to start pushing that glucose out of the blood and into your cells. Another thing that's important to note too, when it's light outside, your mitochondria are literally cranking energy, okay? So the mitochondria, which is like the powerhouse of your cells. So we have a cell, and inside that cell is mitochondria, and that's like our battery, our battery to our cell phone that gets us going. So in the morning, when it's sunlight, that's when we're going to get the most, like mitochondrial energy charge. That's when our metabolism is going to be the highest, and that's what we're going to really capitalize on. So once that sun starts going down, though, as I shared, melatonin starts to rise, cortisol starts to drop. And here's what most people miss. Melatonin doesn't just make you happy, it actually reduces insulin sensitivity. So as we go into the afternoon, into the evening, and the sun is setting and our melatonin is starting to go up, it starts to turn off our insulin receptors and insulin sensitivity, meaning when we go to eat and we don't have good insulin sensitivity, then we are going to store all those calories we're eating in the evening as fat. So when you eat late at night, like 8, 9, even 10pm, your body doesn't handle those calories the same way as it does at 8, 9, 10am so instead of burning those calories for energy, it's going to store them for fat. This is why I always say eat an early dinner. Eat an early dinner. I want you to think of food as literally being fuel, like gas in the tank, right? You know, we so many people wake up, they go, they're getting their kids off to school, they forget to eat breakfast or maybe they, they, you know, barely eat or maybe they're fasting, they think that they need to be fasting in the morning and then they go to eat maybe a lunch and then they get home and they're just like, oh my gosh, I'm so hungry. They sit down for dinner and they just eat their largest meal to be dinner. And then think about like the energy expenditure we need throughout the day to think, to digest food, to be productive, to maybe work out, to pick up our kids, to go grocery shopping, to do laundry, right? Like all of that requires energy. And so when you're not eating all day, you're fasting, you're going against your circadian rhythm and then you're not getting energy into your body to do the daily things it needs to do. And then you sit down at night to eat. But we don't do, we're not like running a marathon at night, right? We don't need to eat all these calories at dinner because we're not usually after dinner. We're kind of shutting down, right? So that's where I tell my clients, like, eat fuel your day in the early part of your day. Give your body those nourish that nourishing nutrients, micronutrients, macronutrients during the day while you're trying to get a lot of stuff done, that's really the most important time to get that nourishment in. And then when you're winding down at night, you don't need a lot of nourishment. You're just chilling, right? So switching the timing of your when you're eating is so, so, so powerful. And just remembering eating the same meal at 8pm or 6pm is completely different, metabolically digested than if you were to eat it at 4pm so really the timing at which we're eating our food has everything to do with how our body metabolizes it and either stores it as energy or you uses it as energy. So let's kind of talk about some more breakfast versus dinner skipping and what the research really says about this because this is so powerful. I always love to look at like science and what literature is out there just to kind of see like what studies have been done to prove this. Right. So there has been several studies that have compared early time restricted eating, so eating between 8am and 4pm versus late eating, like perhaps skipping breakfast and then eating into the evening. I think sometimes when we think about fasting, we think, okay, I'm not going to eat breakfast, I'm going to break my fast at noon. That was kind of the initial trick, traditional way of fasting, but just shifting these time frames can really do a lot. So going back to that study, what it showed was that there are no calorie changes. So one of the most powerful studies published in cell metabolism looked at men with pre diabetes. So they followed an early eating window for five weeks, no calorie changes. So literally ate the same food, just switched the eating time. And they saw improved insulin sensitivity, blood pressure, and lower oxid stress, even with losing extra weight. Like, how powerful is that? They're eating the same foods. They're just switching the time frames in which they're eating. Another study found that early eaters had better fat oxidation, so they're literally burning more fat for energy and even lowering their hunger cues. So meanwhile, late eaters, so they're showing higher insulin and glucose spikes, meaning more fat storage and slower metabolism. And across hundreds of these studies, eating after 8 or even 7pm is consistently linked to more belly fat, higher blood sugar, and increased risk of obesity and type 2 diabetes. So metabolically speaking, skipping dinner or even eating earlier often is like a huge, huge win.

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Supplements the same way again. What I've started doing is really looking at dinner as more of an appetizer. So I'll still make dinner with my family, whatever. We're gonna make like spaghetti tacos, eat like an appetizer because I know we're really winding down. Like I don't need a huge meal to get me through the rest of the day. I really front load my day with all my nourishment. So I eat a really good breakfast with lots of protein, healthy fats and fiber. And then I'll have a really great rich lunch with the same type of things, right? Protein, forward, healthy fats, fiber. And then, you know, going into dinner, we'll make dinner as a family. And then I usually eat just really like an appetizer style because I like to go to bed fasted. I really like to try to not eat three to four hours before bed. And at night it's really our largest window of opportunity to get into a fat burn. And the only way to do that is to go to bed on a fasted state. Also, if you want your body to go into a self cleaning mode, basically to eat up those dead inflamed cells in our body that are keeping you stuck, giving you brain fog, you know, giving you that extra puffy layer around, you know, your body of inflammation, then you need to go to bed fasted because what happens at night is your body will turn on its self cleaning mode. It'll start deleting inflamed cells and it will just go into that autophagy phase and it'll also go into that fat burn. So super, super powerful. Here's a little note I wanted to add because I do work with a lot of clients who are on GLPs and peptides. So I want to incorporate circadian rhythm in the use of peptides if you' using glp. So if you're on a GLP like semaglutide or tirzepatite or even retatrutide, meal timing is still everything. So these peptides, they really do slow gastric emptying, meaning the food stays longer in your stomach. Okay, that's really what helps you feel full. But it also means if you eat a big dinner late, you're going to feel so heavy, so bloated and honestly, maybe even nauseous. And I Promise you your sleep will completely tank because all night long your body is going to be working on digesting that food. It's going to be working on regulating insulin and figuring out what's going on. And it's not going to have that opportunity to go into that self cleaning mode to clean up those dead inflamed cells and get into that fat burn. So because of that I want to just remind you, like eating slow and having smaller meals, especially when you're on those gps is so, so, so important. And just remember digestion really does naturally slow down at night anyways. So you're kind of dou effect on that. The really, just really the most powerful thing you can do outside of those small meals is just make sure you're going to bed in a fasted state. So to really try to finish that dinner two to three, even four hours before bed. This gives your body really just enough time to digest, lower insulin and shift into that fat burn mode while you sleep. And that's just truly where the power is at. One thing too, I want to know. I've, I've worked with women who are like I'm just not hungry in the morning, I really don't feel like I could eat a lot. You don't need to eat a large meal if you're not eating a lot right now. I would just start small. So even just having like one egg or like half a cup of Greek yogurt, or you know, maybe like a quarter of an avocado, half of an avocado, like anything just to get the nutrients in to get started. What will happen is as you start shifting your eating time frames to be earlier, it will, you'll notice shifts in your hunger cues. So instead of eating late dinner and then you're going to bed, you're waking up, of course you're not hung and maybe you're not hungry until like 10, 11, 12. What you're going to do instead is you're going to start eating a earlier breakfast. Okay. So that protein fiber and then you're going to go throughout your day, eat an early dinner and you'll go to bed fasted. I promise you, after three to four days of going to bed fasted, your metabolism will turn on and you will wake up hungry. You'll be like, oh my gosh, I need to eat something right now. That's when you know your metabolic switch is starting to, to really start to turn on. If you're waking up and you're not hungry, that is usually indicative that there's metabolic kind of inflexibility happening. And so just making some of these tweaks, even after just four days, you will notice a huge, huge, huge difference. You really want to maximize again the sunlight. You want to maximize cortisol, you want to capitalize on that with fueling it with the food. Because your body is, is in a literal fat burning mode. It can metabolize the food the best at these times. So take advantage of that. And also like think of your metabolism as like a fire in the morning. We want to get that fire going. We don't want the fire to be dead until lunchtime, right? We want to get it going right out the gate. So that's why you want to put some fuel in your fire, put some food in your fire to really turn on that metabolism. It's so, so, so powerful. Okay, so just to recap and give us a little game plan, this is what I'm going to challenge you guys this week. I want you to really just eat when it's light out, okay? So in the morning we're gonna have a little breakfast. We're gonna do some avocado, maybe an egg, maybe some Greek yogurt, maybe a protein shake, a little bit of fiber, whatever your taste buds are wanting. But we are gonna have breakfast. Okay? Then we're going to not eat for at least three hours. We're going to let our body dig, go on with our day, insulin to drop and then we're gonna have another incredible lunch. Then I want you to look at dinner as an appetizer, okay? We don't need a full on meal with carbs and starches and all this stuff all. Then we just veg out and chill because again we're not, we're really winding down for the night. So do a smaller breakfast appetizer style. And then I want you to just make sure you don't eat two to three, maybe even four hours before bed. Really try to get at least 14 hours fasting in during the day, but you want that 14 hours to start early in the evening. That way when you wake up, you can eat again.

Okay?

And then I want you just to really use those mornings to hydrate, to move, to get light exposure in. Exercising in the morning while your cortisol is high is a perfect time. Sometimes, you know, working out at night is so counterintuitive also to those enzymatic processes that are not in alignment of circadian rhythm. So I would just really try to get your workout, get your movement in early in the morning when the sun is up. If you live somewhere where it's not sunny, you can use a red light to kind of replicate some of that ATP energy. But really just when you wake up, get some hydration in, get some fuel in your body fast, get that lunch in fast again and then you're going to have a small dinner and go to bed. Try that for three to four days. I promise you, you will see such shift shifts and so many changes just in inflammation, in your hunger cues, in your digestion even and honestly your sleep, you'll notice. Wow, I'm actually sleeping so much better because my body is actually focused on restoration and regeneration and not focus on digesting food all night. We actually went out on a date the other night and we had a later dinner and you guys, it took me like two days to recover. I also, you know, have like a really sensitive gut. So anytime time I feel inflammation, it's in my gut. But it was like that night I didn't sleep that good because my body was like digesting the food. Woke up the next day, didn't feel like my most optimal peak self. Took another day and I really probably should have just fasted all day. That really would have been the fastest way, but it really took me two days. It's so crazy. I'm also, you know, when you do all this work, you do become very sensitive to changes. And so, so I'm just very in tune like when something even little is off. But anyways, this, this whole framework on time restricted eating in this window of time in the morning versus at night is so powerful. I challenge you all to do it. Let me know if you have any questions. I'm. I always love to hear like, oh my gosh, I did it. I did a 24 hour fast. Or I tried this, tried that. This is how I felt. Send me a DM on Instagram. Truly I am like here for all the, all the fun updates. But that is all I have for today. Thanks so much for joining. I'm so happy you're here. This podcast has been truly so much fun to put together. I'm definitely learning as I go and it just is such a fun place and a creative space to just like pour these conversations that I have so often with clients and just to have them in one place so we can reference back to or have that like little subtle reminder when we're going throughout our life and be like, what was that one thing I did that really helped? So I hope that you enjoyed it and we will be in touch again soon.

That's it for today's episode of the Biohack Method. If this lit something up in you, do me a favor, share it. Tag mesybirwell Wellness and drop a review. Ready to dive deeper? Head to the show Notes for peptides, patches and programs that are changing the game for high performing women like you.