{"id":98578,"date":"2025-05-13T17:10:09","date_gmt":"2025-05-13T17:10:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/98578\/"},"modified":"2025-05-13T17:10:09","modified_gmt":"2025-05-13T17:10:09","slug":"what-time-should-you-eat-lunch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/98578\/","title":{"rendered":"What Time Should You Eat Lunch?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lunch: a martini-soaked<\/a>, 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\u2019s something worth thinking about, according to experts in longevity<\/a> and nutrition<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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<\/a> and good metabolic health.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost people have breakfast and lunch within four hours of each other,\u201d says Adam Collins<\/a>, associate professor of nutrition at the University of Surrey. But Collins recommends leaving at least four hours between meals, and avoiding any snacks<\/a> and drinks<\/a>, especially ones containing carbs, during those gaps. A bigger gap between meals\u2014if, for example, you\u2019re eating between 8 am and 8 pm, you might have lunch around 2 pm\u2014gives your body the space for smaller fasting periods during the day.<\/p>\n

There are also ways to minimize the risk of falling into that dreaded post-lunch afternoon state, where you\u2019re bloated, sleepy and sluggish. Rupy Aujla, a doctor who produces podcasts and cookbooks as The Doctor\u2019s Kitchen<\/a>, recommends avoiding refined carbohydrates like those contained in sandwiches, snack bars, granolas. Protein, which we often don\u2019t eat enough of, is good to have instead. And \u201cif you\u2019re sleepy in the afternoon, think about hydration,\u201d he says. \u201cSometimes, people aren\u2019t hungry, they\u2019re just not well hydrated<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Valter Longo<\/a>, 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, \u201cthey get used to it.\u201d (He himself only has black coffee<\/a> for lunch.) This aids with weight control, helps optimize the fasting time between meals, and heads off an afternoon lull in energy, \u201cbecause you don\u2019t have the insulin release and all the postprandial consequences\u201d of a big load of food. (For people who are underweight, or aged about 65 and over, Longo says it\u2019s better to stick to a full-sized lunch.)<\/p>\n

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\u2019ve just got to be aware that it makes getting all the protein, fiber<\/a>, fruit and vegetables your body needs that much trickier.<\/p>\n

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\u2019re eating within a 10- or 12-hour window\u2014which you probably are, if you\u2019re not having a morning meal\u2014and 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<\/a> until Friday evening.<\/p>\n

This story originally appeared in British GQ<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lunch: a martini-soaked, Wolf of Wall Street-style epic of consumption, or a sad sandwich at your desk, scarfed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":98579,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4318],"tags":[11994,2409,1203,105,4434,16367,16,15,2488],"class_list":{"0":"post-98578","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nutrition","8":"tag-digital_syndication","9":"tag-eating","10":"tag-food","11":"tag-health","12":"tag-nutrition","13":"tag-textbelowcenterfullbleed","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom","16":"tag-wellness"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114501637293522514","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98578","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98578"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98578\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/98579"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}