Time-Restricted Eating for Weight Loss: The Best Meal Timing Based on Your Circadian Rhythm

Nov 14, 2025 | Press/Media

Time-Restricted Eating for Weight Loss

In this second half with chronobiology pioneer Dr. Satchin Panda, we turn his research on circadian rhythms into clear, humane meal-timing practices. This is time-restricted eating (TRE) as it was designed: not calorie counting, not punishment, and not diet culture in disguise. It’s about letting your body do what it’s built to do—digest, repair, and rebalance—on a predictable daily rhythm.

What TRE Is (and Isn’t)

  • Is: Eating all of your day’s food within a consistent 8–10-hour daytime window, then leaving ~14–16 hours overnight for true rest-and-repair (no grazing).
  • Isn’t: Starving, skipping essential fuel, or “earning” food with exercise. TRE was never meant to be OMAD (one meal a day) or an excuse to white-knuckle through hunger.

Why it helps: When meals occur during daylight and fasting happens at night, your gut, liver, pancreas, muscle, and brain clocks line up. That improves glucose control, lipids, blood pressure, inflammation, sleep quality, appetite signals, and energy, without micromanaging calories.

Start Here: A Simple 10-Hour Daytime Window

Best for: steady glucose, easier sleep, less evening snacking, sustainable weight regulation

How to (quick start):

  1. Pick a daily 10-hour window that fits your life (example: 9:00 am–7:00 pm).
  2. Eat breakfast 1–2 hours after waking, a solid lunch, and a lighter, earlier dinner.
  3. Close the kitchen 2–3 hours before bed. Water or herbal tea only afterward.
  4. Keep that timing at least 5–6 days/week. (Perfect is great; consistency beats perfection.)

Why it works: Daylight eating aligns with your highest insulin sensitivity and digestive capacity. Nighttime fasting lets core temperature drop, melatonin rise, and the brain/body complete deep repair.

Two plug-and-play examples:

  • Early shift: 8:00 am–6:00 pm (breakfast 8–9, lunch 12–1, dinner 5–6)
  • Standard workday: 9:30 am–7:30 pm (breakfast 9:30–10, lunch 1–2, early dinner 6:30–7)

Coach’s note (from me): Begin with 10 hours. Once it feels easy, consider 9 or 8 hours if it still supports mood, focus, training, and social life. Health > rigidity.

Anchor the Day: Bigger Earlier, Lighter Later

Best for: insulin regulation, energy, fewer night cravings

How to:

  • Make breakfast + lunch your main fuel (protein, fiber, complex carbs, healthy fats).
  • Keep dinner lighter/earlier—think protein + veg + smart carbs in modest portions.
  • Exercise morning or early afternoon when possible; late-evening high-intensity can delay sleep.

Why it works: Your pancreas and GI tract are more responsive earlier in the day; evening glucose spikes tend to be higher for the same foods.

“Does This Start My Clock?”: Morning Drinks & Add-Ons

  • Neutral to minimal impact: water, plain herbal tea.
  • Low impact for many: black coffee/tea (if you notice jitters, reflux, or sleep issues, delay until your window opens).
  • Starts the clock: anything with sugar, milk/cream, sweetener, collagen in coffee, MCT, juice, nightcaps, “small bites.” If it can raise insulin, count it.

Gentle Progression (4 Weeks)

Week 1 – Awareness & Setup

  • Log your current first/last calorie and set a 10-hour daytime window.
  • Move dinner earlier by 30–60 minutes; dim lights after dusk.

Week 2 – Consistency & Sleep

  • Hold the same window 6 days.
  • Digital sunset 60–90 minutes before bed; keep bedroom cool/dark.

Week 3 – Quality Tweaks

  • Keep the 10-hour window; front-load protein and fiber earlier in the day.
  • Finish dinner ≥2–3 hours before lights-out.

Week 4 – Optional Refinement

  • If feeling strong, try 9 hours (not required).
  • Add a midday daylight break (5–10 minutes) to reinforce the rhythm.

If Diet Culture Co-Opts TRE (Don’t Let It)

TRE was never meant to become OMAD or a game of “how long can I hold out.” Common red flags:

  • White-knuckling hunger with stimulants all day, then food-coma dinners.
  • Training hard + tight window + low calories → relative energy deficiency (fatigue, poor recovery, menstrual changes, stress injuries).
  • Social isolation because your window is too rigid to share meals.

Fixes:

  • Use 10 hours, not 4–6.
  • Eat enough, especially on training days.
  • Make dinner earlier, not tiny.
  • Keep it humane and social—this is health, not penance.

Honoring Hunger (and Why It’s Good News)

Hunger is a signal, not a flaw. With a stable overnight fast, mild hunger means you’ve used readily available glucose and are transitioning to stored fuels (including liver fat, which is protective when burned). As rhythms stabilize, most people report less late-night hunger and more natural satiety during the day.

Practice: Eat when your window opens; slow down at meals; notice the moment you feel satisfied (not stuffed). This re-trains hunger and fullness hormones to work for you—no app required.

Decision Guide (At-a-Glance)

  • Evening cravings: move dinner earlier; add more protein/fiber at lunch; protect dim light.
  • Morning crashes: shift more calories to breakfast, step into daylight soon after waking.
  • Afternoon slump: balanced lunch + brief daylight walk.
  • Training days: keep the same window; increase total calories and fluids.
  • Frequent late dinners (work/family): choose a later but consistent start; still finish 2–3 hours pre-bed.
  • Weekends: stay within ±1 hour of your weekday window.

Explore Dr. Satchin Panda’s research and resources →

https://www.salk.edu/scientist/satchidananda-panda/,  https://www.instagram.com/satchin.panda/?hl=en,   https://www.linkedin.com/in/satchin-panda-926ba369/, https://x.com/satchinpanda?lang=en 

FAQs

Is 8 hours “better” than 10?
 Only if it still supports mood, focus, training, and social health. Many thrive at 10 hours; some prefer 9 or 8. Your best window is the one you can live with.

What about alcohol?
 If you drink, keep it with dinner, not after the window. Late alcohol fragments sleep and spikes glucose.

Coffee first thing or wait?
 If you’re sensitive (anxiety/GERD/poor sleep), delay coffee until the window opens. Otherwise black coffee is acceptable for many; avoid sugar/cream outside the window.

Shift work or jet lag?
 Anchor TRE to your local “day”, protect darkness during your “night,” and use morning light when you want to be awake. Keep meal timing consistent across shifts when possible.

GLP-1 meds (e.g., semaglutide):
 Think of them as training wheels for those who can’t feel satiety. Use the calm they provide to practice TRE + mindful, adequate meals, then work with your clinician on a long-term plan.

 

Safety First

  • History of eating disorder/disordered eating, pregnancy/breastfeeding, insulin-treated diabetes, frailty, or complex medical regimens: work with your clinician to adapt TRE safely
  • Athletes/active women: watch for RED-S signs (fatigue, poor recovery, injuries, menstrual changes). If present, widen the window and eat more—performance and hormones come first.

Put This Into Practice Today

  • Choose your 10-hour window.
  • Eat breakfast within 1–2 hours of waking; keep dinner early and lighter.
  • Close the kitchen 2–3 hours before bed; dim the lights.
  • Repeat most days of the week. Adjust, don’t abandon, on messy days.

Continue Your Journey

For more evidence-based guidance on psychology, nutrition, and sustainable health, visit http://anew-insight.com/. 

View  here the full podcast Transcript:

 

[00:00:00]

dr–supatra-tovar_4_07-30-2025_114442: Welcome back everyone. We are back for the second half of our amazing interview with world renowned scientist and bestselling author, Dr. Satchin Panda. Dr. Panda gave us some really amazing insight into how important our circadian rhythms are for our health, our weight, how we age. You name it, we’re gonna be diving into, uh, time restricted eating and what that actually means and how that is in alignment with our circadian rhythm and can help us maintain a healthy weight without even trying.

So Dr. Panda, please explain. You kind of went into it a little bit in the last, uh, section. Give me a picture of what time restricted eating is.

satchin_2_07-30-2025_114442: Yeah, so that’s a mouthful of, uh, term time restricted [00:01:00] eating. But in popular media, this is also one for most popular form of intermittent fasting. There

dr–supatra-tovar_4_07-30-2025_114442: Yes.

satchin_2_07-30-2025_114442: almost, um,

13 years ago when we first published this result from this research, uh, we called it time restricted eating because we are not calorie restricting. There is no reduction in calorie. Um, there is no. There originally, there was no counting up calories, and the idea is instead of counting calories, if you just look at the count, the number of hours or number of minutes you are eating, there is, there will be few benefits. One is if that eating window is consistent, then that will sustain your circadian rhythm in physiology, hormones, metabolism. that means your body can metabolize or absorb nutrient much better, and also process the nutrient, use them properly, and [00:02:00] during the fasting or overnight fasting period, uh, it’ll also, the metabolism actually changes from building stuff to cleaning out or removing the toxins so your body has enough time remove these toxins that your body doesn’t need and repair itself. So that was the whole idea. And then the idea came from, again, very foundational research in mice. And again, we are going back to this basic research because these are some of the questions that we cannot ask in humans. So the original experiment was very simple. We took, uh, mice that are young, they’re born to the same parents in the same room.

I think same gut microbiome, same genes. They add the same diet. Uh, we actually gave them a little bit unhealthy diet and they add the same number of calories. The only difference was one group was allowed to eat whenever they wanted, and the second group was allowed to eat the [00:03:00] same number of calories from the same food within an eight hour window. So that means mice are nocturnal. So they’re night active, they eat at nighttime unlike humans. So in the evening we would give them food, access to food. They would eat for eight hours. They catch up with what the, uh, other group was eating. And we did this for 18 weeks, which is I equivalent to feeding a human for 10 years or so roughly. And then after 18 weeks, uh, what we, surprisingly, what we found was the first group that ate whenever they wanted, they were obese, diabetic, they had high cholesterol. Uh, all the telltale signup, metabolic dysfunction, or they had metabolic disease. later on we also figured out that they were also more prone to cancer. But the second group that ate the same number of calories from the same unhealthy diet within eight hours were completely protected from all of these bad things, bad metabolic [00:04:00] disorders. So that was the first experiment. And then in the second experiment, we took the fat mice. Those already had the disease. And we put them back into eight, nine or 10 hours of eating, even 12 hours of eating. What we found was when in case of mice between eight and 10 hours, they, if they eat within eight to 10 hours, even for five days out of seven days, even though the mice were allowed to cheat on weekend, they could still maintain their healthy body weight.

They could still get almost 80 to 90% of benefit of. Doing the eight hours every single day for seven days. And they also improve their muscle performance and sometimes the, at least the male mice could put on some extra muscle. So that was really surprising. We published those. And then in the intervening 15, 13 years or so, there are at least a thousand different research papers repeating the study in different conditions in different countries even. [00:05:00] In different strains of mice, uh, rats now even in fruit flies and also in humans, the conclusion is very similar, that if mice, humans, or any animal can eat within eight to 10 hours consistently, at least for five to six days in a week, seven days is much better. Then they can. Prevent disease from happening.

Not only metabolic disease. Now there are some studies showing even you are more less prone to cancer or even those who are going through cancer treatment, they may combine this intermittent fasting to manage some of the adverse effects of, because people who go through chemotherapy, they have chemo fog in the brain, they cannot think clearly and they’re confused or their body reacts to some of the drugs.

So at least those, um, maybe again, is a big con, big qualifier. Maybe [00:06:00] because, you know, people are different. Some people might have different stages of cancer, different stages of, um, different types of, uh, drug. So, um, I was surprised the profound effect of this time restricted eating or time restricted feeding, in popular media, intermittent fasting on not only our metabolism, but also for some hormonal, uh, disorders for cancer, for even now for dementia and some of the psychiatric conditions.

dr–supatra-tovar_4_07-30-2025_114442: Yes. And are they finding the same? I mean, I don’t wanna give the people the impression that you can eat like donuts for eight hours and not have any kind of metabolic disease. Maybe mice can and good for them, but what’s the difference in terms of like the, the quantity of what we eat during that,

satchin_2_07-30-2025_114442: Yeah.

dr–supatra-tovar_4_07-30-2025_114442: time period?

satchin_2_07-30-2025_114442: So this is also something interesting that although [00:07:00] we might say, well, you can eat anything. But what we’re finding is after maybe the first week is difficult. People typically eat over 12, 13 hours. Um, most people will say, uh, I eat within 10 hours because I have my breakfast at eight and then I finish eating, but my dinner at six.

But then you probe a little bit. What do you do after waking up? And then some people will say, well, I have a little bit of tea. Oh, I put just happy a teaspoon of sugar that should not do anything. But actually as soon as you putting, even sometimes even black coffee, because you know, black coffee also triggers some metabolism.

But anyway, supposedly we forget about black coffee and black tea. that you put that has sugar cream or of these, any of these, then that triggers insulin response because your body has to produce insulin to take care of the glucose that is entering your bloodstream. So that

dr–supatra-tovar_4_07-30-2025_114442: is [00:08:00] waking up the villains. Similarly,

satchin_2_07-30-2025_114442: you might finish your dinner at 6, 6 30, but then you might have a night cap or a little snack, um, before dinner, before sleep snack, or somebody comes to you, visits you, or you go to a visit somebody. So all of these things matter. So that’s why we say you have to be really religious or strict about eating within this eight to 10 hours. And if you do that, then we find that, uh, after a few weeks, the first week is a little bit difficult. People will feel hungry and all that stuff. But then after one or two weeks, what we find is interesting, people actually find that donut to be too sweet, so the bliss point for sugar actually changes.

dr–supatra-tovar_4_07-30-2025_114442: Wow, that’s cool.

satchin_2_07-30-2025_114442: So they cannot, like I personally, even I, I could finish a donut several years ago, but not [00:09:00] anymore.

dr–supatra-tovar_4_07-30-2025_114442: Same.

One

satchin_2_07-30-2025_114442: quarter of a donut is enough. So my bliss point had changed. And then what we also find, some people find that, um, the same, french fries or the, um, or the chips to be too salty or they’re not that appetizing. Because what happens is when you go through this 14, 16 hours of fasting, what I think is happening is your, your test sensor, the test boards are also recycling.

They’re also getting sensitized, so you tend to enjoy food, the natural flavor, and taste of cooked healthy food much better. You don’t need that high dose of sugar, salt, fat

to trigger your brain to feel happy. So you can be happier even with the, with, uh, less food or less, um, sugar, salt, and fat. That is a, that’s kind of a [00:10:00] side effect that we see. There is a nice paper that, uh, came out from Geneva, one of my collaborators, and he did a study on time restricted eating in Lucerne and Geneva. The nice thing, the reason why it was interesting was, uh, those who are familiar with that part of the part of Europe, there are German speakers, English speakers, and French speakers.

So that means they have various different culinary preparations and also people have different habits, cultural habits. And what they found was when people were restricting their diet to fixed 10 to 12 hours, in that case, then they inadvertently improve their diet quality. So. So this is kind of a interesting side effect that we didn’t know that people actually improve their diet quality when they try to stick to eight hours or 10 hours.

dr–supatra-tovar_4_07-30-2025_114442: That is amazing, just naturally,

satchin_2_07-30-2025_114442: Yeah.

dr–supatra-tovar_4_07-30-2025_114442: just because you’re giving your body the chance to [00:11:00] remove toxins. And you know, if you’re eating a lot of highly ultra processed foods, you’re getting a lot of, uh, additives and preservatives and strange chemical concoctions. And if you give yourself enough time to, uh, release those from their body, uh, they may not hold such an addictive quality anymore, which I think is really.

Hopeful. What about, uh, how much? And when? I’ve done a lot of, uh, reading about how you, you know, if the bulk of your calories came in the morning and in, you know, early afternoon and then became much, uh, smaller towards the evening time, um, that was the best, especially for, um, your insulin regulation. What do you have to say about that?

satchin_2_07-30-2025_114442: Yeah, so as, uh, we have circadian cloud that does different things at different time of the day. Um, there are a few things that you touched off on. One is what happens in the [00:12:00] morning. So, for example, in the morning, as you can imagine, your body has rested for 12 plus hours. So that means your digestive juice are primed your stomach can digest a good chunk of food. And your insulin response is also much better. This because the better cells that produce insulin, they’re also primed, they also have a circadian clock. Um, they respond to food much better. So as a result in the first half of the day, it’s not only like right after waking up in the first half of the day, um, say six to eight hours after wake up, up to that time, your body is much better in digesting processing food and controlling blood glucose. Uh, so that’s why having a bigger meal in the fast half of the day, uh, is better for your body.

dr–supatra-tovar_4_07-30-2025_114442: Mm-hmm.

satchin_2_07-30-2025_114442: the day progresses, your insulin response goes down slightly so that you can [00:13:00] even do the experiment yourself.

If you have access to CGM, you have the same bolus of sugary drink or smoothie in the morning. You look at your blood glucose, how it responds, and then the evening, after seven, eight hours of fasting, uh, you can eat this, drink the same sugary snack. Uh, smoothie and you’ll see for most people the evening post, prandial glucose spike would be much higher because, uh, pancreas doesn’t respond correctly in that way.

Uh, yes, it may be better to have bigger meal towards the fast half of the day, but then there is another caveat. Our body kind of plays, tricks with us. One is, you know. If we dial back more than 200 years ago, we didn’t have food available to us 24 7. Even fire was not 24 7 keeping fire going in the [00:14:00] house was very expensive because you had to bond coal or food through 24 7. So that’s why. In the ancestral population, what was happening was people would come back from hunting or agriculture and there was no refrigerator. So even if you hunted and you got a rabbit or um, or some meat, you cannot store it overnight. You have to cook it. So that means in the evening, the community or the family would light up a fire and then cook, grill, whatever it is, and then would share the meal. So as a result, what has happened is we humans also have another interesting phenomena that is we are more likely to feel hungry in the evening. And so that means we are feeling more hungry in the evening, but our insulin response is much better in the morning. Why is that? Because in the morning you’re not going to go kill a rabbit and eat it in the morning.

You’re more likely to go and find some ripe [00:15:00] fruit or vegetables, which has a lot of carbohydrate, and that’s what we are designed to eat during the daytime or in the past hour. Whereas in the evening when you come back and you know, in most cases you are grilling some. Meat, um, uh, or protein, and that doesn’t need too much of insulin response.

So maybe that’s why we are designed in a way that we are feeling more hungry towards the end of the day, but our insulin response is much better in the beginning of the day.

dr–supatra-tovar_4_07-30-2025_114442: But do you think that for the most part, in terms of just human biology, that for most people, even if we have the tradition of dinner and dinner being for many people the largest meal of the day, our bodies function much better in general, if we have the bulk of our calories earlier in the day, yes.

satchin_2_07-30-2025_114442: and also another thing is, you know, and if you go back to [00:16:00] many, 200 years ago, it was not that every night somebody is killing a deer or bringing a big animal. It was a little bit of food that was shared among many people, and they. You know, in a family there would be six or seven kids, and then the grandparents and the uncle, and then the, people who are sick, everybody has to share the same meal.

So it was not a big feast every day, but we are having a big feast every single day.

dr–supatra-tovar_4_07-30-2025_114442: Yes.

satchin_2_07-30-2025_114442: So that’s the difference. So now if we combine all of this, so maybe what would be practical would be after waking up, maybe wait for one or two hours. Before your first meal or breakfast have your breakfast at a consistent time.

Just like going to bed at a consistent time is good for your mental health. Having the breakfast at a consistent time is also good for metabolic health. And after suppose, say you wake up at [00:17:00] seven, you are waiting for a couple of hours, your breakfast is at nine, and in case you cannot have breakfast at home because your commute time is long, you can always bring your breakfast back at breakfast, eat at work, and then suppose, say you count eight, nine, or 10 hours, then from nine o’clock, 10 hours is 7:00 PM So that means if you’re back home around 6, 6 30, then you can have your dinner. And that’s when you’ll close your kitchen. So I thought, so that would be an ideal, uh, way where you can balance everything. You are still having breakfast, you’re having a light lunch so that you build up enough appetite for a good dinner with your family, and then supposed, say you’re finishing dinner at seven, most people go to bed after 10 o’clock anyway, so you will have three hours of good fasting before going to bed, because this three hours of, uh, evening [00:18:00] fast actually helps you to digest food so that your core body temperature can go down and your melatonin builds up and it’s not in interfering your blood glucose regulation so that you can have a good night’s sleep.

dr–supatra-tovar_4_07-30-2025_114442: I tell you what, that uh, that’s what I’ve been doing now, especially since I’ve read your book. Um, I make sure that, you know, my breakfasts and my lunch are kind of my biggest. Meals in the day. Um, I have something light towards the end of the day. I exercise early, which I think is also, um, much better for our sleep later at night.

Like you said, if you are exercising in the afternoon, it’s great. You’re exercising. We love that. But you may have a delay in your sleep because of the stress hormones that come from that. But ever since I started to do that, I mean, I have not had a problem with my weight. I’ve had one, you know, wonderful sleep.

Um, and especially, you know, when I am very conscious about, uh, the health [00:19:00] status of my food keeping it more on the healthful and whole foods, plants, that whole deal. Um. I, I know that I operate, um, so much better. My energy’s better. Mental health is better. I really honestly can’t remember the last time I was depressed.

Yeah, there’s normal, um, you know, like chaos, uh, in our political climate anxiety out there that I think we all have, but I certainly handle it so much better. Uh, thanks to so much of the work that you’ve done. I also work with people who struggle with eating and with eating disorders, and I’ve actually seen, I think some difficulties come from people who have co-opted your research to squeeze it into diet culture.

So what we see, so what we see is this like, um, adherence to intermittent fasting as a diet. And a lot of [00:20:00] people make their windows very short or they will hold their eating until like as long as humanly possible until they’re about to pass out and then start their dieting. So can you address that at all?

Have you heard about. You know, the, the co-opting of time restricted eating into diet culture.

satchin_2_07-30-2025_114442: Yeah. So, um, you know, typically people think that when they go from say 14 hours of eating to 12 hours, they feel better. 12 to 10, they feel a little bit better, and then eight, they might feel better. And then they think that, okay, so if I can reduce it to three hours or two hours, one meal a day, uh, then that

dr–supatra-tovar_4_07-30-2025_114442: That’s a whole diet, the OMAD diet, and I’m like, I don’t even, I, I would, I would die. Like literally I, if I could, if I only could eat one meal a day, that would make me very sad.

satchin_2_07-30-2025_114442: Yeah, I mean, um, it’s, it’s a [00:21:00] little bit extreme and particularly for young adults or anyone say before the age of 60, they are typically having a work. They have to go to work, they’re doing a lot of stuff. They’re taking a lot of, uh, complex decision throughout the day and. What we find is even, I’ve talked to some people who do this one meal. What we find is what they do is they try to hold up the hunger by drinking a lot of black coffee or black tea throughout the day. And, uh, towards late afternoon, they’re kind of hangry.

dr–supatra-tovar_4_07-30-2025_114442: You think.

satchin_2_07-30-2025_114442: No, actually I have, I have heard the confession that some, uh, people are very hangry and, um, but then they still take the badge upon that they can hold off until evening and then they eat that, lot big meal and then they go into food, coma and sleep. So, uh, that’s. [00:22:00] One way people are dealing with it. And what we see is most of them actually cannot hold on to doing this for a very long time. They might do it for a month two, and then they will realize, um, how uh, you know, sometimes they’re not eating with their family, sometimes they’re not socializing with anybody and they realize that this is not a healthy way mentally, emotionally, and also physically. So then they will revert back to maybe eating within eight or 10 hours. For women. We have seen quite a few women, they want to do everything perfectly. So they will try to eat within eight hours. They’ll go for five miles, run every single day, and then they’ll try to eat a lot of salad and reduce their total food intake. So then what happens is they get into what we call relative energy deficit in sports. So this is a mouthful. But actually nearly 40% of athletes, even Olympic level [00:23:00] athletes, um, you know, Boston marathon runners and even weekend athletes and college eight athletes, the, uh, varsity athletes, high school athletes, nearly 40% four out of 10 are doing this.

They’re eating less and they’re exercising more. And they might feel better because they’re slim and trim.. They have a good physi, but actually internally, their organs are suffering because when you have less food available, then your body will eat itself. So, so that happens. How it eats itself is, um, the bone mineral density goes down so that they can have high risk for bone stress injury for women, the telltale sign is the, the menstrual cycle will become irregular or then become amenorrheic. And in fact, you might have heard many um, athletes, they would say that they are  amenorrheic or irregular menstrual cycle. And the thing that [00:24:00] being an athlete, and having this is. So common that it may be normal, but what is common is not normal always. So, um, if they see that their menstrual cycle is changing and becoming more irregular or amenorrheic then that’s a good sign that they are eating less and pushing their body to the extreme.

dr–supatra-tovar_4_07-30-2025_114442: Mm-hmm. Absolutely. And you know. I, I think when we are looking at people who are trying to improve their health, they’re getting all of this messaging from diet culture that hunger is bad and we need to stave it off, or we gotta like muscle through it or drink as much coffee as possible, which is, I can’t even imagine the anxiety these people are feeling when they do this.

And I, I’m always trying to tell people that hunger is not bad. Hunger is a very important signal. Can you [00:25:00] explain to people why it is so important and it is important to heed it? It’s important to feed ourselves when we are hungry.

satchin_2_07-30-2025_114442: Yeah. So, um, you know, when. We feel hungry. So that means it’s a sign that our body has, used up most of the easily available sugar or carbohydrate and it’s kind of tapping onto our store. And most of us, we, think that, uh, you know, and also we kind of dramatize this, if you’re hungry, people will come and say, oh, I’m starving.

No, you don’t know what is starvation, sorry. Most people don’t know what starve is. And then reaction is you should reach out and grab that energy bar or something to feed yourself. But if you are, um, for a regular person, you know, if you had a good meal in the morning, um, it takes roughly five [00:26:00] hours for that breakfast to get digested in your stomach to go to intestine.

And that’s where a lot of nutrient abject also occurs. And, when you’re feeling hungry, particularly, you know, when people start that timeless eating or intermittent fasting, they’re stopping at seven o’clock that dinner time, and then at nine or 10 they’re feeling hungry. So that means the body, the brain is so used to that evening snack that it’s just triggering.

Hey, go reach out for that evening snack. But actually your body is perfectly fine. In fact. Many of us who have A BMI above 21 or 22, we carry enough reserve in our fat and and muscle that we can go for even one or two weeks without food and our body will continue to crank. So in,

dr–supatra-tovar_4_07-30-2025_114442: but yes.

satchin_2_07-30-2025_114442: yeah. Theoretically that’s what, that, that’s how much reserve we [00:27:00] have. Um, so that’s why you’ll hear all this news when, you know, after a natural disaster, after a earthquake or something, somebody was trapped under, uh, some building for seven days and they found him alive because, you know, the body was using that reserve. the bottom line is when you start that hunger, that means the body has either depleted, it’s easily available carbohydrate, and is looking for that storage. And let it look for the storage, let it take out that stored fat that we have been storing, run it off a little bit. And in fact, you know, when you’re delaying that meal. literally your body can, will be perfectly fine with three meals or two meals even, in a day and in between if you’re feeling hungry, that’s just a sign that the body is switching from one energy mode to another energy mode. And when it switches that, then it’s [00:28:00] actually good thing because. When we use energy, from carbohydrate or fat, we also, our body also produces different types of molecules that are used in building our body or repairing our body.

For example, after several hours of fasting, say overnight 12 or 13 or 14 hours of fasting. Your ketone level will go up slightly. So ketones actually come from burning fat,

dr–supatra-tovar_4_07-30-2025_114442: Mm-hmm.

satchin_2_07-30-2025_114442: in the liver and in some other parts of the body. Not every part of our body can make ketones, but that liver burning its fat is a good thing because that’s how liver doesn’t accumulate that fat.

That leads to fatty liver disease, which is a silent killer

dr–supatra-tovar_4_07-30-2025_114442: Mm-hmm.

satchin_2_07-30-2025_114442: Uh, you’re doing, uh, your body is doing at least two or three good things when you burn that liver fat, then you are protecting yourself against fatty liver disease that’s going to affect one in three adults in this [00:29:00] country. Second is that ketone is going to power your heart and many other, uh, organs because some, some of our organs actually love ketones than sugar. The third is some of the ton actually are good for our immune system because they make our immune system more efficient in finding, say, tumors or baby tumors or tiny tumors or even fighting bacteria and other things.

dr–supatra-tovar_4_07-30-2025_114442: Mm-hmm.

satchin_2_07-30-2025_114442: So in that way, when you’re hungry, you ask yourself and have you eaten enough in the last 12 hours? if so,

dr–supatra-tovar_4_07-30-2025_114442: I think that’s hard for people. I think that, you know, it’s habit, you know, with, with what they eat and how much they eat. And certainly I think allowing the body to be a little bit hungry, um, you know, in getting to a certain point is good. But I think diet culture just takes [00:30:00] that to a whole new extreme and we’re seeing that.

Most, especially with these weight loss medications and what, you know, we’re seeing on the disordered eating side or the eating disorder side, is that some people are consuming maybe like 850 calories in a day. And so what we’re seeing is that that amount of calorie restriction, even if they’re losing weight most often it’s it’s water and muscle that they’re losing.

satchin_2_07-30-2025_114442: Yeah.

dr–supatra-tovar_4_07-30-2025_114442: Your body goes through a whole set of processes that are not going to be sustainable in the long term. Just like any hyper caloric restricted diet. Once you go off of that, you know, the body basically understands. Now I’m not in emergency mode anymore. And when, when you’re in emergency mode, yes, it might be burning off of those things, but holding onto those juicy, juicy fat molecules,

satchin_2_07-30-2025_114442: Yeah.

dr–supatra-tovar_4_07-30-2025_114442: um, that’s why people weight cycle as soon as they go off of something that’s hyper calorically [00:31:00] restrictive.

So would you say that the takeaway, and I cannot believe we’re almost at the end of time, Dr. Panda, I just wanna spend the whole day with you, but would you say that the takeaway is that, there is a fine balance that we know from our circadian clocks that we can eat more and more, you know, starchy carbohydrates and things that are, um, you know, a little heavier in the morning.

We reduce it a little bit more in your lunch, and then it gets smaller in your evening and therefore you don’t ever really need to quote, restrict your calories or go into extreme hunger.

satchin_2_07-30-2025_114442: Yeah, that’s true. I mean, I, there’s a fine balance. You don’t over it, but at the same time, you should not, uh, calorically restrict yourself, uh, many, many days.

dr–supatra-tovar_4_07-30-2025_114442: Mm-hmm.

satchin_2_07-30-2025_114442: you know, there is, uh, some data that, well, one or two days of calorie restriction may be good, but then beyond that [00:32:00] it canwreck havoc by eating away your body.

dr–supatra-tovar_4_07-30-2025_114442: Mm-hmm.

satchin_2_07-30-2025_114442: uh, yes, I agree that there is a fine balance there. And as you mentioned, for some people, when they feel hungry, they immediately have to eat. And that’s why some of these new drugs, uh, like Ozempic, Wegovy and all of these, uh, they’re helpful for people who cannot tolerate that hunger because it’s essentially, uh, reducing that signal so that people feel full even with a small meal. And the idea is, it’s almost like when you are trying to learn that bicycle, this is the third wheel. You are given this third wheel to gain back control over, over your hunger and satiety. uh, this is also an opportunity when you have the third wheel, gotta start riding your bicycle much better so that you [00:33:00] don’t need that third wheel after a while. So.

dr–supatra-tovar_4_07-30-2025_114442: And, and if I could add, if we actually do listen to our hunger and we listen to our fullness and we’ve actually follow, um, our circadian rhythm, we enhance the production of our own satiety hormones because. And we make them. It’s not like we’re getting ’em from these drugs. We make them ourselves.

satchin_2_07-30-2025_114442: Yeah.

dr–supatra-tovar_4_07-30-2025_114442: We enhance the production of them, especially when we’re present, when we’re eating, we eat when we’re hungry.

We eat slow enough in our meal to understand the moment that we’re satiated but not over full. And then we balance our fullness hormones as well. Would you agree?

satchin_2_07-30-2025_114442: Yeah. I mean, that’s why I said that when people start doing time restricted or intermittent fasting the first few days, they feel hungry at bedtime. But then after a week or two, they don’t feel hungry anymore because the body actually [00:34:00] learns to produce or reduce that hunger hormone at bedtime and increase, um, satiety hormone so that people can go, um, 14 hours, 12 to 14 hours of fasting without feeling hungry.

So this way, having a strong circadian clock, it brings back that hormonal balance of hunger and satiety so that we can get back to our belly rhythm of feeling hung at the right time, eating the right food, and then feeling satiated so that we can go through the overnight.

dr–supatra-tovar_4_07-30-2025_114442: Ugh, I love this. So everyone, if you can take away from this that we have our own internal clock, everyone’s clock is pretty much the same. Sorry you night owls. It’s pretty much the same. If we were to all go off into the mountains of Colorado and you can all join me, I’m gonna be there next week. Um. So if we get back into this rhythm, we listen to our body’s signals.

We eat slowly enough so that our body [00:35:00] can, you know, take time with it and, and register all of this food in our stomach. We listen to that moment when we’re no longer hungry. And we follow this clock, we can have our optimal health without doing anything, especially when it comes to restrictive dieting. Dr.

Panda, oh my gosh, you are, you’re just awesome and you’re just such a kind and good person. Um, and just funny and, and wonderful and I’m just so honored that you’ve come on my podcast.

satchin_2_07-30-2025_114442: Thank you so much and have a (unclear) day.

dr–supatra-tovar_4_07-30-2025_114442: Thank you. Thank you everyone for joining us. Tune in next time for the second half of this. Oh, sorry. Thank you everyone for joining us and I am really looking forward to the next exciting interview with, although I’m not sure if anybody’s gonna be any more exciting than Dr. Panda. Dr. Panda, thank you for joining us and goodbye everyone.

satchin_2_07-30-2025_114442: Thank you.

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