Meal Timing - Staying Ahead of the "Curve"

Life nowadays has a way of getting in the way of our health if we let it. It’s so easy to get caught up in the fast pace of the world around us. What with moms and dads both working, kids involved in every activity under the sun, it’s hard to slow down and pay attention to those things that are important to our very existence - like eating. Society has tried to help us meet the demands of a very fast-paced lifestyle by offering fast-paced solutions; you can hit a drive-thru for everything from prescriptions to dry cleaning! No more need for looking something up in the Yellow Pages, just Google it! And eating? Well, that’s something that is done more “on-the-fly” than anything. Unfortunately, this just doesn’t work so well for staying healthy and fit. As a mature female trying to stay energized and healthy through all this madness, it’s important to pay attention to nutrition, which takes on a very critical role as the female body begins to experience hormonal changes.

Good nutritional intake requires a little balance and forethought, but don’t freak out - it’s easier than you might think, and once you get the hang of it, you will never forget how! Meal timing is critical to the human body in order to maintain constant, steady energy to keep it moving through the day. Our bodies are programmed to send us signals when it’s running out of energy - rumbling stomach, loss of focus and concentration, irritability, and headache are the common signs. Most people recognize these signs - they’re actually kind of hard to ignore - but more often than not, they are pushed aside, or handled with a quick and unhealthy fix for the sake of getting on with life. Problem is, a vicious cycle is now being programmed…

The body uses an approximate 3 to 4-hour window to breakdown and utilize the nutrients and energy found in food; this window is referred to as the “glucose curve”, and it has to do with how blood sugar levels rise and fall in our systems. At the low end of the curve, when you feel or recognize those hunger signs, your levels are very low; as you add food, your blood sugar increases, and at the top of the curve, the levels in your blood are high; as your body uses the sugar (which is called glycogen) to feed muscles, organs, brain tissue, etc., the levels start to decline, and gradually drops down the other side of the curve, and you will start to feel hungry again. (For those of you with more questions on this amazing process - and I know you have them! - I will talk more about how certain foods affect blood sugar in another article.)