How food ‘’behaves’’ different when it is consumed at various times.
Time:
In the day and age we live in, we are all too well acquainted with the periods in which we routinely adhere to routines and customs. British people drink tea at the same time. Spanish people have siestas at the same time. There are many more, and they are there with a reason. Rest of the world that doesn’t fancy tea all that much resorts to periods of feasting called breakfast, lunch and dinner. They aren’t exactly exotic in the sense that they are named siestas, but they have a very good purpose. What does time have to do with anything remotely important to our bodily functions and healthy weight . We will examine some of the most common examples how time affects our bodies, considering both the health and fitness side, and the number on the scale side. Let us begin!
Rise and shine:
No one has to be an expert on this, but stay up late and wake early. Even when you don’t have anything important to do. You will still fail to do even that. Well, maybe not completely, but a myriad of problems will occur. Ranging from lack of concentration to lesser focus, our body doesn’t reward us very much when we don’t respect how it works. What we need to know, besides the fact that those things won’t do us any good, is that sleeping has a lot of potential to transform us.
We all have a natural biorhythm called circadian clock. Circadian clock is in tune with the solar time, and it makes us balanced, in the sense that we are always feeling sleepy and rising full of energy. That is because we can think of the circadian rhythm as a natural clock. Mess with it, and you won’t go far as far as health goes.
Schedule:
If you sleep regularly (and I don’t mean that as a joke) at the same time, you will experience benefits of routine. Your body will be attuned to what it has to do in order to perform. Also, we mentioned earlier, there are more things that happen when you don’t sleep well. You have hormones called ghrelin and leptin. Leptin is a hormone that increases your appetite, and ghrelin decreases it. When you sleep at random times, or you are just a party animal, these two will get out of tune really fast. Lack of sleep causes increased levels of ghrelin, and decreased levels of leptin. And trust us, that is no good for the health, and weight especially so. It practically means that you will have to eat far more to feel the same level of satiation.
To avoid all of this, look at people who do low intensity jobs, or manual labor. If you are not too well in love with the law, look at prisoners. Both of them can teach you a lesson. A farmer, for example, has to rise at the same time every day. His body, because of that, naturally starts to function and consume calories. That farmer usually does his work, and eats his lunch and dinner at the same time as well. His body is really good with adjusting how it will go because of this.
Prisoners, on the other hand, do all this, albeit involuntarily. They have to wake up at the same time. Meals are a must at the same time. And you get the rest. What is the point of this? Have you ever seen prison inmates? Some of them are really strong because they have adapted the rhythmic nature of our bodies, and they have a strict schedule that they adhere to. That is why it is so much easier to get fit, once you have the time you need, but in order of things.
Law of inertia:
Law of inertia states that if a body is moving, it will continue to move. If it is resting, it will continue to rest. That is the same case with weight loss. Too many people start. Then stop. Then start again. And the cycle repeats itself indefinitely. Which doesn’t make any logical sense. Things take time. Things that are worth it take even more. If you are walking at first, it would take a month to be able to walk some respectable distance. If you are running, it could take years to progress to a better time on the mile. Take your time and progress gradually. Rome was not built in a day.
Also, have respect to time, even here. Run and walk once you are done with your progressive overload training principle, so you don’t burn out on the less demanding set of exercises.
Stopwatch:
The more straightforward approach to training and weight loss is the stopwatch. If you can do training of your choice faster (with proper form), that completely means that you can recover better, utilize nutrients better, and have more room for other things (or more weights). Also, this goes the other way round. If you are training for strength, and you are not resting, you can’t really expect your body to be at full capacity. See the connections time has? Don’t neglect what you see on the stopwatch, and you will go a long way.
If you are doing hypertrophy, you can rest for 2 mins. For strength, you should rest 5. When training feels too easy or too light, and you have rested for 10 to 15, well, there is your answer. That is also the reason people don’t rest at any competition. Cardiovascular health is of great importance to training and recovery. Run and walk rather than rest too much when training with resistance.
Say yes and no:
Fans of intermittent fasting will understand this. Basically, when you don’t eat anything up to, let’s say, 2 pm, do a favour and don’t eat until that time. Let your body learn how you function. If you say you will eat 2 meals, or 1 big one, don’t eat randomly and pick 5 meals when you said 1. Remember, you build routines and good behaviour all the time, and wrecking yourself also takes time, and dare I say almost twice the effort.
That is it. Some strategies to help you incorporate time into your fitness. Make time for things that make time worthwhile.