Meal times
Learn to eat around your body's rhythms.
Ever had bad feedback about snacks or eating late? There are scientific reasons for this and they’re worth understanding.
When and how often you eat makes a big difference to your metabolism. It helps to understand a little about how your body processes and absorbs food.
Although your organs and brain need a constant supply of glucose, you only eat periodically. So how does your body meet this constant energy demand? It processes the food you eat and uses whatever it can immediately while storing surplus energy for later.
The food absorption timeline
3. Fasting - Normal state after food is processed
The fasted state is healthiest
It is associated with increased fat oxidation, improved glucose regulation, circadian rhythm regulation and gut microbiome balance.
When your body is in the absorptive state after a meal, it down-regulates various physiological systems (from cardiovascular to cognitive functions) to redirect resources towards the digestive process and nutrient absorption.
Timing your food intake
Here are three different scenarios for 24 hours of your metabolism. Each puts you in the post-absorptive/fed states for different lengths of time.
The green zone is where your body functions optimally and gets to recover, particularly if you’re asleep.
- 3 meals in a day
- 3 meals and 2 snacks
- 3 meals but with a later breakfast and earlier dinner
When is too late to eat?
In scenarios 1 and 2 above, your body is going to sleep while it’s still doing some mildly intense, physical (you can’t feel it, but you have to push that food around 15 feet through your system) work. These processes and movement compete with the restful state you need to sleep properly.
Work towards a window of four hours between your last meal and sleeping.
When you go to sleep in the post-absorptive state, the quality of your sleep will be better. And sleep is where your body does a lot of the ‘housekeeping’ around energy that is involved in losing weight.
Insulin resistance in the evenings
Insulin clears glucose from your blood. In the evening, your body naturally becomes more insulin resistant due to circadian rhythms. This means your cells aren’t as responsive to insulin, so when you eat carbs later in the day, your body struggles to clear glucose from your blood efficiently—leading to bigger and longer spikes. At night, melatonin rises, digestion slows, and your body prioritizes rest over energy processing. That’s why the same meal that worked for you at lunch might cause a spike after dinner.
In Limbo, you can use this insight to guide meal timing: front-loading your energy when your body can handle it best, and keeping evenings lighter to support fat burning and better sleep.
Do you need to snack?
The illustration above shows that snacking means you’re completely taking yourself out of the most beneficial green zone. You won’t need to snack if you aren’t on the blood glucose rollercoaster. Follow the prompts you get and you’ll find that the hormones governing your hunger and cravings will change. That’s how you’ll get out of the snacking habit.
Make sure you’re eating plenty of protein and non-starchy vegetables during your meals.