According to the latest research, how to lose weight successfully is a function of what you eat and when you eat it.

So while the weight loss formula that I recommend is very simple, to eat real food, you might also want to consider the nutrient content of what you eat in terms of the time of day you eat it according to research done by Dr. Panda.

It is also  important to understand that not all calories are created equal and this has an impact on when you eat certain foods. Successful weight loss does not boil down to just a calories in calories out approach. How to lose weight successfully is very much more a function of what type of calorie it is, in particular how many carbohydrates it contains.

If you are planning to eat a meal that has carbohydrates you might want to eat that type of meal earlier in the day. In fact I would say, to make dinner the least carb laden meal that would include eating only eat vegetables and protein and a healthy fat such as olive oil or avocado.

This advice flies in the face of a commonly held rule of how to lose weight that a calorie is a calorie, no matter what time of day you consume it. Weight loss does not boil down to a simple weight loss mathematical equation of consuming fewer calories than you expend.

In fact, there is now emerging evidence that people who consume the exact same diets in terms of calories and macronutrients – carbs, protein and fat – may see very different results on the scale and in terms of blood sugar control, triglycerides and even cholesterol levels, depending on how they distribute their food intake throughout the day. It seems to be metabolically favorable to consume most of our calories and carbs in the early part of the day, compared to consuming the majority of them in the evening. This makes sense because it aligns with how we expend our energy.

The reason for this has to do with a part of our brain called the hypothalamus, which houses a cluster of nerves that govern a “master biological clock,” also known as circadian rhythms. In response to different cues, most notably light and dark, the master clock up-regulates or down-regulates genes that produce the hormones, enzymes and cell receptors responsible for metabolizing and storing carbohydrates and fat.

In the morning, people seem most sensitive to the effects of insulin, requiring less of this hormone in order to clear our blood of the sugar produced from a higher carb meal. At night, we are less sensitive to insulin, resulting in higher blood sugar levels, higher levels of insulin secreted and increased amounts of fat storage in response to higher carbohydrate meals. In other words, the carbs do not get used but stored as fat.

Clearly, this does not bode well for those of us used to large pasta and rice-based dinners and grazing well into the evening! This research is still emerging, but it does not change the overall rule that of how to lose weight successfully, you should eat when you are hungry, eat the right food, (real food) and stop eating when you are full.