What time should you have breakfast to speed up your metabolism?
It’s not just what you eat for breakfast, but the time at which you consume the first meal of the day, considered by nutrition experts to be the most important one for getting the body moving.
Consuming the right foods helps improve metabolism , keep blood sugar under control and reduce the feeling of hunger during the day. However, it is good to have a suitable time to eat breakfast, for several reasons: to speed up the metabolism , and therefore lose weight , but also to have intestinal regularity and energy to face daily commitments.
What time to have breakfast to speed up your metabolism
The time at which it is best to have breakfast to speed up the metabolism varies from person to person. Experts, however, agree in defining a time slot in which the first meal of the day should be consumed, and it is between 7:00 and 8:00 in the morning , i.e. that period of time that generally corresponds to waking up for majority of the population.
The ideal time for having breakfast, however, does not necessarily correspond to the time of waking up, but varies based on when dinner was consumed the night before, on one’s lifestyle or subjective ailments.
The 12 hour window
To make the task easier and therefore understand what the right time would be to have breakfast, a quick and easy calculation, defined as the “12-hour window”, comes to the rescue. Translated it means: let at least 12 hours of fasting pass between dinner the previous evening and breakfast the following morning.
If you have dinner at 8:00 pm, for example, you will have to have breakfast at 8:00 am. This could be a congenial routine, but also 7.00pm -7.00am etc. A different matter when dinner is eaten late because breakfast time would be postponed to mid-morning, and this does not always turn out to be the best choice for health.
Promote the intestinal microbiome
One of the positive effects of the 12-hour overnight fast between dinner the previous evening and the following breakfast favors the correct functioning of the intestinal microbiome , i.e. the set of microorganisms present in the intestine , which influences the state of health of an individual. In this fasting window, the microbiome observes a moment of rest, thus managing to regenerate itself for the well-being of the intestine.
Late breakfast and risk of diabetes 2: the study
Calculating the 12 hours of fasting, if you have a late dinner, is it better to postpone it until mid-morning or skip breakfast ? The answer comes from a study published in the National Library of Medicine which identified 9:00 as the maximum time within which you should have breakfast.
The risk of often postponing breakfast to mid-morning is an increase in the risk of developing type 2 diabetes by up to 60%. This occurs because the metabolism, much more active in the early morning, resists insulin the longer the time is postponed.
Insulin, as it is known, is a hormone that has the crucial function of regulating blood sugar. Insulin resistance increases the presence of glucose in the blood , causing glycemic spikes . This process has two types of effects: in the short term it causes weight gain especially in the abdominal area , but in the long term it causes the onset of pathologies such as type 2 diabetes .
Late dinner: mid-morning breakfast or should we skip it?
However, having dinner late and then skipping breakfast is the wrong choice. Rather they have a coffee with a biscuit and a small piece of fruit, or a yoghurt , but breakfast should not be skipped. Research published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology highlights how eating a late dinner and not eating breakfast regularly can contribute to an increase in oxidative stress , inflammatory states and the risk of cardiovascular diseases .
