Weight Management
Overweight and obesity are defined as abnormal or excessive fat accumulation that may impair health and are at epidemic levels with highest rates in developed world. Contrary to common belief, the cause of weight problems is not just that one consumes more calories than one uses One major factor is the direct correlation between metabolic diseases when circadian rhythms, including meal times and sleep, are disrupted. |
Key Facts About Weight From The World Health Organization (WHO):
Excessive fat accumulation in the body is associated with a whole host of issues from the type and amount of nutrition intake to the time of the meals, and from hormonal balance to the brain's ability to curb hunger for sweets. Here we concentrate on timing of meals and hormonal balance closely associated with well-regulated circadian rhythms which have important roles to play in food metabolism and weight management.
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Obesity is preventable. |
WEIGHT MANAGEMENT TIED TO CIRCADIAN RHYTHMSOverweight and obesity is highly associated with sleep disorders and circadian rhythms disruptions. Chrononutritions is the study of nutrition intake that considers circadian system. Circadian rhythms are driven by biological clocks inside our bodies. The brain contains a master clock, switched mainly by daylight, which alerts the "peripheral" clocks in the muscles and organs of time of the daybreak. |
Sleep quality and duration has shown to have direct effect on hormonal balance and craving for sweets. |
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The master clock harmonizes the timing and expression of all of the metabolic processes which take place within us at different rates over the course of a 24-hour period. The liver for example, shifts from its day rhythms to its night rhythms and processes that promote more fat storage of extra calories than conversion of them to usable energy. Late-night eating is directly in disharmony with livers night processes and can be a major source of weight gain. Because of circadian rhythms, there are variations in certain hormone levels, enzyme levels and glucose transporters at different hours of the day, which deferentially affect how calories, carbohydrates and fats are metabolized. Circadian rhythms can help explain why eating late at night increases the likelihood of weight gain and decreases the rate at which we lose weight, compared with eating earlier in the day.
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Late-night eating is directly in disharmony with livers night processes and can be a major source of weight gain. |
Light Affects Your AppetiteLight, specifically the blue spectrum, is the strongest of all environmental cues for circadian rhythms entrainment. Exposure to blue light, before and during your evening meal, may affect how much you want to eat. In a small study, exposure to blue light spurred higher hunger levels compared to exposure to dim light. Those hunger levels stayed higher for about two hours after the final bite. Other studies have shown that blue light affects our sleep quality and duration by suppressing melatonin production and secretion, making it very hard to fall into sleep. Sleep quality and duration has shown to have direct effect on hormonal balance and craving for sweets.
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What to Eat vs When to EatWeight loss is hard and not sustainable through dieting alone. Research suggests that when you eat might be just as important as what you eat and how much you eat. Over-consuming calories at any time of the day will result in weight gain. But skipping meals, or eating too few calories earlier in the day, appears to stack the odds against us as well. Eating late at night increases the likelihood of weight gain and decreases the rate at which you lose weight. Consideration of appropriate meal times is the most effective way to control metabolic diseases even without calorie reduction. |
To improve your weight and health it is important to eat in sync with your circadian rhythms. |
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To be able to improve your weight and health it is important to eat in sync with your circadian rhythms. That means eating earlier in the day. Eat breakfast and make lunch the main meal of the day and consume very little for the evening meal. A feeding period of 8 hours per 24 hours is recommended, granted that the last meal is consumed by 6 p.m. This ensures a metabolic homeostasis and maximum conversion of food to energy, while allowing the body plenty of time to prepare for a good night of sleep. Front-loading, calories and carbohydrates, is not only favorable in terms of weight loss; it has beneficial effects on other indicators of overall health, including decreased risk for type-2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
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MetabolismYour metabolism is working in a certain way, whether you are awake or asleep. If you are awake during most of the night, you still want to be eating most of your calories during daylight. If you have to stay up at nights you may sync up with metabolic circadian rhythms by eating breakfast at the end of the night shift, at 7 or 8 a.m., and then eating the heaviest meal when waking up, about 3 or 4 p.m. Research suggests that the calories we burn from digesting, absorbing and metabolizing the nutrients in the food we eat is significantly lower at 8 p.m. than 8 a.m. Other metabolic processes involving insulin sensitivity and fat storage also operate according to circadian rhythms and can greatly influence the likelihood of weight gain or weight loss at different times of the day. We get less metabolically robust as we age. You might have gotten away with skipping breakfast and eating out of sync in your 20s or 30s, but that might change as you grow older. |
We get less metabolically robust as we age. |
HOW CIRCADIAN EYEWEAR CAN HELP YOUR WEIGHT MANAGEMENTCircadian Eyewear can help you to achieve weight loss without dieting by increasing your melatonin level at nights. When wearing Circadian Eyewear 2 hours before scheduled bedtime, the melatonin secretion starts promoting on-time sleep and helps its duration and quality. An on-time quality sleep has been shown to reduce the craving and hunger for sweets in the subsequent day. In addition, melatonin controls the blood sugar and helps to curb your appetite in the late hours before sleep. Late calorie intake is synonymous with weight gain and the natural secretion of melatonin can suppress late night cravings. Wearing Circadian Eyewear promotes stable and balanced circadian rhythms by compensation for the dark time. This has been shown to have positive effect on a balanced hormonal secretion including ghrelin and leptin. The timely secretion of leptin has a decreasing effect on appetite, which is the main problem when it comes to weight management. |
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RESEARCH REGARDING WEIGHT MANAGEMENT TIED TO CIRCADIAN RHYTHMSResearch from PubMed Timing and Intensity of Light Correlate with Body Weight in Adults Leptin and Hunger Levels in Young Healthy Adults After One Night of Sleep Loss Morning and Evening Blue-Enriched Light Exposure Alters Metabolic Function in Normal Weight Adults.  Diurnal regulation of lipid metabolism and applications of circadian lipidomics. Research from Wiley Online Library Research from The Journal of Physical Fitness and Sports Medicine |
