As a kid, my father would come home from work at 4.35pm. By 4.45, we would sit down for dinner. Call it early-bird or building healthy eating habits but like clockwork, our evening dinnertime was set from Monday to Friday. On weekends, despite travelling or not having the normal routine, our stomachs would be growling loudly by 5pm!

These healthy food habits lasted for me all the way to college when maintaining this lifestyle seemed next to impossible and I ended up stress eating most of the time. It’s a long road we travel sometimes to get back to our healthy food habits.

Over the last 6 years, my life has changed back into a routine where healthy eating habits and the timing of my meals are my first priority and as a result, I’m now the healthiest I’ve been food-wise in a long time.

The key important factor for developing these healthy food habits is why we should eat on time is energy. The more consistent we are with our healthy eating habits, the less work our body needs to do for energy. As an added benefit of this, our weight tends to become stable and we don’t have to partake in crash diets stress eating or fluctuate like a yo-yo with our size.

Of course, healthy food habits may not happen overnight but we shouldn’t ever deprive our bodies of food if we feel hungry. But I guarantee you that if you actually set a schedule and follow healthy eating habits diligently for just one week, you’ll never feel hungry or the need to stress eating out of time.

It’s a terrible disservice we do to our bodies by not following some basic timing principles. We all make time to eat, so why not make that time in time with our bodies so our lives go smoother and far more healthily?

For me, having variety in my meals is what I look forward to most at my set mealtimes. I know no matter what I eat, I will be able to digest it because my body has adapted to my healthy eating habits and is able to handle it. It’s a luxury I get from being in control and letting food be a given that I am consciously thinking about at the start of my every day.

-Amit Vaidya

Amit Vaidya is the best-selling author of the memoir Holy Cancer and the upcoming Food Is Medicine cookbook series. He is the in-house health & wellness expert for Kapiva Ayurveda, advocating for the empowerment of all individuals to be in the driver’s seat of their own lives. He chronicles his life on Instagram under the handle @live4todayamit. 

Take a look at Steps To Manage Weight