The Right Time

So what’s the right time to eat? At dawn. Never after 8pm. Always eat a “king’s breakfast”. Throw out all those faddist dictums, all you need is one simple principle—eat more when you are active, either physically or mentally, and less when inactive. This is the same logic as getting your tank full before embarking on a long drive. Instead, what we often do is get our tanks full to park (ie sit before the TV or just lounge around), and go on long drives on an almost empty tank (ie kill our appetite with chai, cigarettes or pan masala during the most stressful times of the day).

Always eat after physical exercise—your body needs that fuel. And your brain needs it when you are mentally active. By forgoing food when busy, you are compromising on productivity, impairing your analytical and people skills, and setting yourself up for a diet disaster. After a day like this, you will surely find yourself reaching out for that chocolate pastry or samosa.

As for meal times, if work starts early, at 7 am, eat by 6.30 am. But if it doesn’t start until 11 am, you don’t have to get up at dawn to eat. Eat when you wake up. Dinner by 7 pm is great, if you sleep at 10 pm. But if that sounds completely alien to your lifestyle, don’t bother with it. Just make sure you eat between 4 and 6 pm (grilled sandwich, roti with sabzi, idli or two), a time when almost everyone feels hungry. Feel free to eat again, but always stop three hours before bedtime. That’s the time it takes for your body to digest the food, allowing you to sleep soundly, well-fortified with nutrients. Starving yourself or eating too much at bedtime will only lead to the opposite: restless, fitful sleep and a disturbed mind and body.

(A fortnightly column on nutrition and fitness, by the best-selling author of Don’t Lose Your Mind, Lose Your Weight)