Satchin Panda’s book Circadian Code Summary-12 hour feeding window

Circadian Code

The following are things I learned from Satchin Panda’s book Circadian Code about the 12 hour feeding window.

Everyone knows that you need to watch what you eat, count calories, deprive yourself etc to maintain or lose weight. Satchin’s book clearly shows this is not backed up by evidence.

He says we should have a 12-hour window for eating.

I only realized that I was doing my intermittent fasting wrong after reading the book. I always thought that some alcohol after dinner didn’t count against my feeding window. I also didn’t consider my bulletproof coffee at 6:15 am as breaking my fast. I realized that I had been holding a 13 or 15 hour eating window.

So why should we only eat for 12 hours?

1. Gives our stomach and all organs a break from all the processes involved in eating. This break allows our organs to repair.

2. Shorter time with higher blood glucose. Insulin and blood sugar rust the cells. The less time they need to process these bi products of eating the more time they can repair damage.

3. Reverse diabetes. Satchin has a whole book just about diabetes dedicated to the amazing research of how eating in a 12 hour window has reversed type 2 diabetes.

4. Lose weight. Due to less blood sugar your body can start removing fat from the body instead of adding to it.  They tested mice with two feeding windows keeping the same amount of calories for both sets of mice. The first could eat anytime in 24 hours. The second only could access their food for 12 hours. The 12 hour feeding window mice lost weight and were overall healthier.

5. Sleep better. The body gets into deep sleep by cooling down. Digestion heats the body. Eating 3 hours before you get into bed gives your body time to digest and then cool before it goes into deep sleep.

Ripple effects

1.      Build better food selection habits. Trying to stay satiated for 12 hours is tough.

2.      Find better friends who are also focused on health.

I hope these take-a-ways are useful. If you like this article, please subscribe to my newsletter, and my youtube channel.