Lunch: a martini-soaked, Wolf of Wall Street-style epic of consumption, or a sad sandwich at your desk, scarfed down between Zoom calls? The best time might seem like an afterthought during the work week, but it’s something worth thinking about, according to experts in longevity and nutrition.
So, what time should you eat lunch? Yes, you want it to be equidistant between breakfast and dinner. And those meals should themselves be no more than 12 hours apart, to allow for a decent overnight fasting window, which is linked with weight loss and good metabolic health.
“Most people have breakfast and lunch within four hours of each other,” says Adam Collins, associate professor of nutrition at the University of Surrey. But Collins recommends leaving at least four hours between meals, and avoiding any snacks and drinks, especially ones containing carbs, during those gaps. A bigger gap between meals—if, for example, you’re eating between 8 am and 8 pm, you might have lunch around 2 pm—gives your body the space for smaller fasting periods during the day.
There are also ways to minimize the risk of falling into that dreaded post-lunch afternoon state, where you’re bloated, sleepy and sluggish. Rupy Aujla, a doctor who produces podcasts and cookbooks as The Doctor’s Kitchen, recommends avoiding refined carbohydrates like those contained in sandwiches, snack bars, granolas. Protein, which we often don’t eat enough of, is good to have instead. And “if you’re sleepy in the afternoon, think about hydration,” he says. “Sometimes, people aren’t hungry, they’re just not well hydrated.”
Valter Longo, director of the Longevity Institute at the University of Southern California, advises patients at his clinic to strip lunch back to a bare minimum, 100-calorie snack of nuts or fruit during the week. Eventually, he says, “they get used to it.” (He himself only has black coffee for lunch.) This aids with weight control, helps optimize the fasting time between meals, and heads off an afternoon lull in energy, “because you don’t have the insulin release and all the postprandial consequences” of a big load of food. (For people who are underweight, or aged about 65 and over, Longo says it’s better to stick to a full-sized lunch.)
A minimal or non-existent lunch obviously relies on your breakfast and dinner being substantial and healthy enough to give you the vast majority of your nutrition. Having two meals a day is perfectly fine, says Aujla, but you’ve just got to be aware that it makes getting all the protein, fiber, fruit and vegetables your body needs that much trickier.
Or you could skip another meal: breakfast. How does that affect the best time to eat lunch, and what you should eat? The usual rules apply: make sure you’re eating within a 10- or 12-hour window—which you probably are, if you’re not having a morning meal—and be careful to get enough nutrition from your two meals. Longo, who advises against skipping breakfast, says a compromise could be a late breakfast at around 11 am, then a snack in the afternoon, then dinner. And best to hold those martinis until Friday evening.
This story originally appeared in British GQ.