How's Your Rhythm?
Many people claim that they lack rhythm. Setting aside your dancing abilities for a moment, your body operates continuously with a natural rhythm, consciously and unconsciously. Becoming aware and increasingly connected to this rhythm is a key part of achieving the level of health you desire.
Your Rhythm Within
Each day you have a rhythm of waking, of activity, tiring and sleeping. Internally, your body has many processes that serve to maintain this rhythm. Each decision you make throughout your day, including what and how you eat, drink and sleep, affect how your body maintains rhythm.
For example, a natural rise in body temperature helps you wake up each morning. This is also the body’s way of metabolically preparing for energy input in the form of food. This is why breakfast is so important. When we skip (or minimize) a morning meal, the body perceives a shortage of food and begins to shift the rhythm that guides the remaining day. Specifically, the body responds by slowing metabolism and increasing cortisol as a result of stress.
Often there is an attempt to “be more healthy” by minimizing breakfast and lunch consumption. Regularly, my clients who reduce, or even cut-out breakfast and/or lunch report (not surprisingly) being famished by dinnertime. As a result of this stress, your body begins to shift it’s rhythm in order to maintain homeostasis for all related systems. Each time food becomes available (following a significant reduction), the body will indicate significant hunger, the kind that often results in overcompensation for what has been missed earlier in the day.
To compound matters, eating the majority of your calories later in the day further disrupts rhythm by impacting sleep, your primary method of restoration. Sleep is critical for the body to restore and reset and most of us already get too little sleep. Eating large meals late in the day forces the body to continue to work (or commit energy to digestion) during restorative hours. This will only further exacerbate your body’s dietary rhythm and introduce a new impact to the critical restoration resulting from sleep.
Staying on Beat
Eat with the natural rise and fall of your body temperature (metabolism) by eating a full breakfast, a fuller lunch mid-day (when your body temperature is the highest), followed by a lighter evening meal.
If you drink coffee, drink it with your breakfast or, at a minimum, some form of calories. Caffeine induces a stress response in the body. The issue of increased cortisol and sluggish metabolism are compounded when you drink coffee without breakfast.
Eat your biggest meal in the middle of the day.
Remain food conscious in the evening. Ask yourself how hungry you really are? Be mindful of “mindless eating” (i.e. snacking to relax, or out of boredom) or simply as an evening treat. If you feel tired and hungry at the same time, your best bet is to simply go to bed. Often getting hungry is your body’s way of trying to get more energy to stay awake.
Sleep as many hours as you can between 9pm and 4am. These are the hours our bodies (specifically our adrenal glands) restore the most.
Make an effort to go to bed and awaken at similar times on a regular basis.This will help your body stay connected to a natural rhythm.
Remember that we all march to the beat of our own drum. While all of our bodies have the same systems in place, the way our digestion and metabolism plays out is highly individual. Stick with the beat that makes you feel your best.
Coming up
Beyond the internal rhythm, we are connected to a greater rhythm of nature externally. Stay tuned for my next post to find out more!
