Nutrient timing

Timing of a meal can play a major role in your struggle with weight or health problems. Our ancestors followed the nutrient timing principle without actually being conscious about it. Unfortunately, in today’s fast-paced world, we either completely skip eating breakfast or we chomp down whatever we can lay our hands on in the morning’s rush. Some people “brunch” instead of eating a proper breakfast. However, doing so is detrimental to your health. Let’s look at the ideal timing for each meal.

Breakfast

Ideally, you should have your first meal between 60 – 90 minutes after you wake up. Try not to eat almost immediately after waking up. Save the first hour to do your morning chores, some exercise or pranayama. It is important to fuel your body correctly at breakfast, because your body has been starved of essential micronutrients since the previous night’s meal. If there is too long a gap between waking up and having your first meal, i.e. more than 90 minutes, then your body will begin breaking down your muscles for energy.

Lunch

Generally, there is a substantial gap between breakfast and lunch, and this usually leads to hunger and cravings. You can eat a healthy, nutrient-rich, low-carbohydrate snack in between the meals to keep your body going. Ideally, you should have your lunch between 12:30 – 2:30pm. However, a slight delay is acceptable if you adjust your day accordingly.

Pre and post-workout

Depending on the type of workout you do, you need a protein and carbohydrate-rich snack at least 30 – 45 minutes before you exercise. This is especially necessary if the gap between your lunch and workout is greater than 120 minutes. Your post-workout meal is just as important. Unfortunately, most of us tend to neglect this important nutrient timing. The body is most receptive to nutrient absorption up to 45 minutes after a workout.

Dinner

Being the final meal of your day, dinner needs to be light and taken at the right time. Eating a heavy meal just before hitting the bed can adversely affect your health. A gap of at least three hours between dinner and sleep is best.

To satisfy any hunger craving between your breakfast and lunch, you need to have a high protein and fibre-rich snack

Nutrient intake

Knowing what kind of nutrient to eat for breakfast, lunch, pre/post workout and dinner is vital. This second guideline is essential to extract maximum health benefits from our diets. Although my recommendations are based on traditional Indian cuisine, the rule can be applied to cuisines of other regions as well.

The first thing you need to do when you get up in the morning is not have a cup of tea/coffee or some fruit, as is generally advised. Instead, drink some water. Squeeze some lemon juice in the water to make it alkaline. About 90 minutes after you wake up, you can have herbal or non-herbal tea or black coffee with some lemon, or a vitamin C tablet. The antioxidants from both will be absorbed maximum on an empty stomach.

Breakfast

In your first meal, having a fruit or any other food with a high glycaemic index is not a great idea since your body is deprived of carbohydrates after a night’s sleep [especially if you are off carbohydrates during dinner]. Therefore, any form of simple, high GI carbohydrates will spike your blood sugar levels. This will, in turn, raise your body’s insulin levels, sending a message of starvation to your brain. As a result, your body will store the carbohydrates as fats, instead of using it for energy. Contrarily, a sharp rise in blood sugar levels, caused by high GI foods, will lead to an equally sharp crash in the blood sugar levels, making you feel hungry soon after your meal.

An ideal breakfast must contain proteins, in addition to low GI carbohydrates like oats, multigrain breads and poha

Research has shown that having a high-protein breakfast is ideal, as it not only helps curb the sharp rise in blood sugar, but also keeps you satiated for long. This prevents you from getting food cravings and hunger pangs. Therefore, an ideal breakfast must contain proteins, like eggs, cottage cheese, or milk, in addition to low GI carbohydrate sources like oats, multigrain breads and poha. Add some nuts to it and you will have one of the healthiest breakfast options available.

Lunch

To satisfy any hunger craving between your breakfast and lunch, you need to have a high protein and fibre-rich snack. Opt for a bowl of salad made from sprouts with some vegetables, chicken or cottage cheese. Alternatively, you can have a multigrain-bread sandwich with chicken or paneer and some vegetables.

For lunch, you can eat simple home-cooked food, like rotis, vegetable, rice with dal, with a side of salad. Additionally, have a bowl of curd or a glass of buttermilk.

What you eat at night can greatly influence your health

Pre and post-workout

As stated earlier, your pre and post-workout meals are important. For the pre-workout snack, you can eat to suit the kind of exercise you would be performing. If the session involves weight-training or HIIT [high intensity interval training], then a fruit with black coffee and a vitamin C tablet are all you need.

For a post-workout meal, you can supplement your training with a liquid protein and carbohydrate diet. Ideally, you can have whey protein in water.

Dinner

It is important to keep your dinner simple yet nutritious. Avoid having carbohydrate-rich foods. Instead, include proteins like chicken or fish, salads or soups in your dinner. What you eat at night can greatly influence your health.

While these suggestions can be adopted by anyone, the results can differ from person to person. Regardless, following these guidelines will make you see and feel a profound difference in your body within a very short span of time. These suggestions are not some type of fad but a healthy way of eating for life.

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Even then, in most parts of the world, this liquid byproduct of cheese was considered useless and was dumped in lakes and seas after the cheese was separated.

It was only in the early 1990s that Dan Duchaine, also known as the ‘steroid guru’, began extracting pure whey by removing fats, lactose and ash, and made it the phenomenon it is now.

The age old tussle of which protein is better: Vegetarian or non-vegetarian

Typically, the Indian diet is deficient in protein and rich in carbohydrates—one of the main reasons that our country is at the centre of the global diabetic epidemic.

But the bright side of the story is that it does not matter whether you are a pure vegetarian, a lacto-vegetarian, a lacto-ovo vegetarian or a non-vegetarian, you can still get the protein you need from your regular diet without the use of supplements. The pertinent question is whether you are eating the amount and quality of food that gives you your daily intake of protein.

There could be various reasons why you may not be able to have sufficient protein and this is where supplements help. Also, remember that whichever way you measure the quality, animal protein is far better than protein from plant sources. That is why vegetarians have to do a lot of mix-and-match with their ingredients to make sure that they get all the required amino acids.

What’s so special about whey?

Whey protein is a very high quality protein derived from cow’s milk. You may wonder why you shouldn’t just have whole milk instead! The reason is that milk has numerous other components like lactose [sugar] and fat. So whey gives you the benefits of protein without the other ingredients present in milk.

Milk contains two types of proteins—Casein and Whey. Casein forms 80 per cent of milk while whey is only 20 per cent. Whey is derived from the liquid which comes out during the production of cheese. So once cheese is made and the fat is removed, whey is extracted for use.

Whey is presently the highest-quality protein available in the market. It has an extremely high amino acid profile [amino acids are building blocks of protein] and is easily digested by lactose-intolerant individuals too.

The benefits of whey

1. It increases the natural glutathione levels in the body. For those of you who don’t know, glutathione is one of the most powerful antioxidants and is produced in the body naturally as an enzyme.
2. It is one of the best supplements that can be used in recovery.
3. It is known to balance blood sugar levels, thus reducing craving for food and assisting in fat loss.
4. The biological value is the measure of how efficiently a protein source is absorbed in the body. Egg protein is said to have the best biological value in natural foods with a value of 100. But whey protein is said to have a value as high as 170.
5. Whey protein is a thermogenic fuel i.e. its storage and digestion in the body requires the body to spend large amount of energy, thus increasing calories burnt.

Which whey protein to choose?

If you set out to buy a protein supplement, it can be very intimidating especially if you’re not prepared for the wide range of options you’ll meet at the store. One has a choice of egg, soy, casein, pea, beef, and whey proteins to buy from. What adds to the confusion is that each of the above has various types. Here’s some help with the homework.

Whey is simply the best form of protein available in the market and it is available as three types:

• Whey concentrate – These are generally the cheapest. They contain 70 – 80 per cent protein with 5 per cent lactose. The rest is fat. The problem with concentrate is that it may be unacceptable to people who are extremely lactose intolerant.
• Whey isolate – These are over 90 per cent protein. These are purer and costlier than whey concentrate. Lactose intolerant people are generally comfortable with isolates.
• Whey hydrolysates – This is the costliest and purest form of whey available and is over 95 per cent protein. It is used in baby milk for infants who are highly lactose-intolerant and is also used by people who are undergoing digestive surgery.

There is no doubt about it, by using whey, you’ll soon be on your way to a fitter and healthier body.

This was first published in the August 2013 issue of Complete Wellbeing.

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