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Hello, and welcome to the get lean and eat clean podcast. My name is Brian grin. I'm a certified health coach, trainer and author. And this podcast is for middle-aged men and women looking to optimize their health and get their bodies back to what it once was 10 to 15 years ago. I will give you simple, actionable items to get long-term sustainable results. Thanks for listening and enjoy the show. All right, Brian grin here with the get lean eat clean podcast. I hope you had a great weekend. And today I wanted to discuss a topic that hasn't come up too much with many of my guests, but I think it's something important.
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I think it's something that you should consider, especially if you're getting into fasting and I don't want to confuse you with this. I want you just to be enlightened by it. And perhaps, maybe it'll have you structured your day a little bit differently, and that is just understanding circadian rhythm and how this should sort of dictate, you know, when you're eating and when you're not eating. And obviously intermittent fasting can be done in many different ways. So at, at different times for different people. And that's what I love about it is the flexibility of fasting is there's no really right or wrong. I think there's some good rules to abide by and I'll discuss them a little bit today.
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But before I go into that circadian rhythm, let me just give you a little bit of a definition. It's an internally driven cycle that rises and falls during the 24 hour day. So it helps you fall asleep at night and wake you up in the morning. So different systems of the body actually follow circadian rhythms that are synchronized with a master clock in your brain. And this master clock is directly influenced by environmental cues, especially light, which is why circadian rhythm is tied to the cycle of day and night. So when pop properly aligned a circadian rhythm can promote consistent and restorative sleep.
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But when circadian rhythm is thrown off, which I'm sure it's happened to all of us, it can create significant sleeping problems, actually all processes in our body work on a circadian rhythm, not just our sleep and weights wakes life cycles. We actually have clocks in each of our organs that dictate hormone secretion, insulin sensitivity, metabolic functions, nutrient absorption, appetite, glucose metabolism, body temperature, just to name a few. These were these processes work optimally when our external cues lineup with our internal cues. So to maintain optimal health, we want to align our external cues and our internal clues cues.
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So they can work harmoniously. One major misalignment that I run across with a lot of people is late night eating. It's common to see both elevated glucose values overnight and higher glucose response to a meal. When we eat later in the day. And this is mainly a misalignment with our circadian rhythm. And essentially we get lowered. We have lower insulin sensitivity in the evenings. So, you know, you hurt you'll, you'll start hearing this. If you get into fasting more, it's called circadian fasting, right? Where you're actually timing your meals based on, you know, like how the sun is or, you know, making sure that you're eating when you're most insulin sensitive, which I believe is towards the morning.
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So like, I don't necessarily follow this to a T I typically have two meals, one to two meals, and I have it later in the day, I try to finish eating around 6 37 at least about three hours before I go to bed. That's, that's what I shoot for every day. And, and I try not to eat right when I get up. And so those are the rules that I abide by. But if you really want to get in line with this, you could, you could have your intermittent fasting window earlier in the day. And if you love breakfast or let's say you want to do an 11:00 AM first meal or 10:00 AM first meal, and then have like a three or 4:00 PM meal and then be done for the day, that would probably align best with your circadian rhythm, especially now in the winter when it gets dark so early, I mean, it's getting dark by like, you know, 4 35 o'clock at the latest.
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So it's obvious he can adjust as, as the seasons change, especially in Chicago might be different where you're living, but I would definitely recommend the, try it if you've never done it before, early time restricted eating, let's say you've been fasting for a while and maybe you've hit a plateau. Perhaps you adjust your fasting window and move it earlier on. And so this is something I've done a little bit here and there for myself, but I typically have dinner, you know, dinner sort of a traditional thing with my wife, but we try to eat on the earlier side, we try to eat around 5, 5 30. So we like the early bird special either way, give that a try.
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And you know, if for some reason you have, have to have a later meal, you know, due to work schedule or family schedule, I definitely would recommend it to go on the low carb side because it's not going to influence, influence your insulin as much. So just focus on whole foods and maybe a little bit of a smaller portion size. So you're not digesting all that food right before bed, but I also want to give you some bonus tips to help sort of in train these 24 hour sleep cycles that we all go through. One is when you first get up, seek out sun and exposure to natural light, especially early in the day can help reinforce this the strongest circadian cue in the morning.
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And I love those morning walks with my dogs. We haven't gotten a ton of sun, but there is light and it is a great way to start the day. You also want to follow a consistent sleep schedule. So varying your bedtime or morning wake time can actually hinder your, your body's ability to adjust to a stable circadian rhythm. So typically for me, I like to, we like to go to bed around 10, 10 30, and typically get up around well in the summer I was getting up earlier, but I would say between six and seven, o'clock on average, you want to get daily exercise. This is going to actually help activity during the day can help support your internal clock and help make it easier to fall asleep at night.
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For sure. Actually, there's been studies showing that a little bit later in the day for a workout, a three, four or 5:00 PM for best strength and cardiovascular efficiency. So if you're thinking about working out, maybe push it a little bit farther away from the morning, but if it, if it does work in the morning, keep doing it. But if you're trying to sort of maybe try to optimize and change it up a little bit, maybe push it. I've pushed my workouts later in the day as well. Also avoiding caffeine late in the day. You know, obviously caffeine is a big stimulant for some people more than others. If you're really used to it, it probably might not even affect you at all. For me, I'm pretty sensitive to caffeine.
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So I try not to have it later in the day. I would say, you know, if, if you're sensitive, I would say nothing after, you know, like one or two o'clock and it, because it does stay in the system for quite a while, another tip would be the limit light before bed. And that would mainly be artificial light exposure, you know, blue light. And, you know, you can get those glasses if you need to do work blue light glasses, but this can also interfere with your circadian rhythm. And lastly, if you're going to take a nap, which there's nothing wrong with taking an app, just keep it short and early in the afternoon, you don't want to take too long and apps because that will, you know, that'll probably push back your bedtime and that it's gonna throw off your sleep schedule altogether.
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So there you have it. This is, I actually think a pretty important topic and just something to be aware of, especially if you're getting into fasting or just eating in general, don't you, you know, you don't want to eat too late and you don't want to eat too early. I would say would be the main rules, but if you've sort of hit a plateau with weight loss, and even with fasting, maybe move your, your eating cycle up a little bit and it'll give your body a little bit more time to digest and hopefully maybe align your circadian rhythms and maybe help you lose those few extra pounds. So that's all I want to touch on today. If you've got questions, feel free to email me, brian@briangreen.com and I really you listening.
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Do you have any questions? Let me know and enjoy the rest of your day and weekend. I'll talk to you later. Thanks so much. Thanks for listening to the get lean, eat clean podcast. I understand there are millions of other podcasts out there and you've chosen to listen to mine. And I appreciate that. Check out the show notes@briangrin.com for everything that was mentioned in this episode, feel free to subscribe to the podcast and share it with a friend or family member. That's looking to get their body back to what it once was. Thanks again, and have a great day.
