The Best Time to Eat Dinner, According to Longevity Experts

Deciding when to eat dinner often comes down to personal preferences, cultural norms, and daily routines. Whether you enjoy an early meal to free up your evening or prefer a late dinner as an event in itself, the timing of your meal can have health implications you might not have considered.

Timing and Health Benefits

From a health perspective, experts recommend finishing your dinner at least three hours before bedtime. Valter Longo, director of the Longevity Institute at the University of Southern California, explains that eating too close to sleep can disrupt your circadian rhythms, which guide your body’s transition between activity and rest. “If you push your dinner later and later, the message to your system is [that] you should still be active,” says Longo. This disruption can negatively affect your sleep and how efficiently your body burns calories.

Meal timing also influences the length of your fasting period before breakfast the next day. According to Adam Collins, associate professor of nutrition at the University of Surrey, extending your overnight fast can support processes like fat oxidation. “You’re training the body to do what it’s designed to do: burn carbs when you’re eating carbs, and then burn fat when you’re not.” This can improve metabolic health and aid in weight management.

Should You Eat Earlier or Later?

The consensus among experts leans toward earlier eating. Restricting your calorie intake to earlier in the day aligns with your circadian rhythm, which is optimized for processing food during the active hours of your day. Many long-lived centenarians follow this principle by eating a light dinner early in the evening to allow for a 12-hour fast before breakfast the next day.

However, Collin points out that eating a substantial breakfast or lunch isn’t always practical for most people. “It’s quite difficult to eat a big breakfast because you just haven’t got the hunger,” he says, and since many people don’t have access to cooked meals during work hours, dinner often becomes the main calorie source.

Finding Balance

If you’re unable to adopt an early eating schedule, it’s important to focus on maintaining balance and creating periods of rest for your body. A later dinner followed by a low-carb breakfast can still work as part of a healthy routine. Keep an eye on your overall eating habits, and avoid overindulging in snacks or alcohol after dinner. Whether your eating window is early or late, what matters most is avoiding a pattern where meals are spread out sporadically over the entire day.

For those who exercise, particularly resistance-based activities like weightlifting, a large dinner that includes both carbs and protein can help muscles recover. Ultimately, Longo emphasizes finishing your daily meals within a 12-hour window and leaving at least three hours between dinner and bedtime. If your current schedule is working well for you, there may be no need to make drastic changes.

“If you do have a bigger dinner, and you’re sleeping well, your cholesterol and blood pressure [are] fine, then you’re good,” says Longo. But if you’re experiencing sleep or health issues, consider shifting to “a bigger breakfast, a bigger lunch and a smaller dinner,” which is often considered the healthiest pattern overall.