Although everything from when you sleep, eat and workout will influence exactly how many calories you burn and when, a new study suggests that there is a particular time of the day when your body burns the most calories, naturally.
The study was conducted at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital Center for Clinical Investigation in partnership with Harvard University and was published in the biology journal Current Biology in November 2018. The research findings suggest that our circadian rhythms can influence calorie burning. Circadian rhythms control our body’s internal clock, sleep and wake cycles. While conducting their research, labs found that at rest, humans burn around 10 per cent more calories in the late afternoon than they do late at night.
Although it’s still unclear as to whether you should be scheduling your workouts and meals around the late afternoon surge in energy, Dr. Jeanne Duffy, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, says it means at rest (or sleep) our bodies will burn about 130 extra calories during the late afternoon and evening than they do in the middle of the night, without any extra work. This suggests that we should be avoiding the body’s natural calorie-burning dip in the late night and early morning.
For example, eating your breakfast at an abnormally early time, when your body doesn’t need that much energy to maintain its functions, that breakfast might result in extra stored calories as they aren’t being used by the body. This raises questions around the health for shift workers and people who keep unusual hours, and how their bodies might be storing calories that are introduced during these times.
So there you have it, late afternoon and early evening is when your body is naturally burning the most calories.
You might also like:
You favourite brunch food may be ruining your sleep
The daily hack that might be the key to losing weight
This common diet staple may protect against heart attacks
Related stories
Native ad body.
Native ad body.
Native ad body.
