In the US the clocks go back tonight: at 2 AM on Sunday 1 November it’s 1 AM again. (Europe and the UK did it a week ago, on 25 October.) You get an extra hour of sleep.
I get an extra hour of temptation.
The 3 AM trap, with a bonus
My rule is the pre-bed snack at 10 to 10:30 PM and never at 3 AM. The reason is in the post about why I eat at 10:30 PM. On the night the clocks change, your body wakes up an hour “early” by the new clock, and that is exactly when the kitchen starts calling.
So I eat the snack at 10:30 PM that night, not 10. A slightly bigger one if I’m hungry: yogurt and a banana. Then I stay in bed.
The wall clock decides
For the first few days your body will tell you it’s an hour off. I don’t follow it. Breakfast, the mid-morning snack, lunch, the afternoon snack and dinner stay at the same times on the wall clock. If I’m truly not hungry at one of them, I eat a smaller version. I don’t skip it.
Skipping is how the day ends with one big meal, and one big meal is the thing the five-meal pattern exists to avoid.
The dark afternoons
From now until March the evenings get dark early. That’s when the cravings change. Warm, heavy, comforting food starts to look good at 5 PM. I plan a warm, light dinner on purpose: a soup, a baked potato, rice with poached chicken. Hot food that stays inside the fat budget.
I’m a patient, not a doctor. This is what works for me. If you’re on insulin or diabetes medicine, ask your doctor about meal timing before you shift anything.
Stepan’s Rule: the clock on the wall decides when I eat. The extra hour in bed is for sleeping.
Does your routine wobble when the clocks change? Tell us how you handle it in the PancreasZen community, and steal someone else’s trick.