The Best Time to Eat Thanksgiving Dinner, According to Experts

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Some people eat Thanksgiving dinner in the early afternoonwhile others argue that it is better to eat it much later in the evening. Either way, we usually eat too much and leave the table feeling bloated and lethargic. So is there a best time of day to get the party started?

We chatted with two gastrointestinal experts to find out the best time to eat a big meal like Thanksgiving. Here’s what you need to know.

Although she never promotes a big meal, says Marie-Pierre St-Onge associate professor of nutritional medicine at Columbia University and center director for the American Heart Association-funded Go Red for Women Strategically focused research centerrecognizes that Thanksgiving is a day when people tend to overindulge and that there are ways to balance that. She told HuffPost that eating the majority of your calories earlier in the day is preferable for several reasons.

“It’s easier to adjust for the rest of the day if you overeat at a previous meal,” says St-Onge. “It’s also not ideal to eat large meals right before bed because you’ll be full and have undigested food in your gastrointestinal tract that could potentially lead to gastric reflux in people who are sensitive to it.”

She explained that food tends to build up and possibly cause reflux if you lie down immediately after a large meal.

To avoid this problem, St-Onge recommends taking a few hours at the end of the day to allow your body to digest everything before you go to bed. About 2-3 hours should be enough, but how long it takes for food to pass through your gastrointestinal tract depends on a number of factors.

These include “the individual gastric motility of the person, the amount of fiber in the food, the amount of liquids consumed at the same time, [and] the nutritional composition of food. … If it’s a bigger meal, you obviously want to give yourself more time,” St-Onge said.

Kelley Bradshaw, manager of the Nutrition and Wellness Services at Brigham and Women’s Hospitalagrees that eating a large meal like Thanksgiving earlier in the day is ideal, but points out that “what really matters in the end is if you don’t experience that discomfort [post-meal] is what you eat and the amount of what you eat.”

“If you had a giant Thanksgiving meal, it was three servings of everything [lunchtime]you will probably feel quite uncomfortable, while you would be eating at 5 or 6 o’clock [p.m.] But if you’ve had just one serving of everything and you’ve balanced it all out, you might feel good just because it’s the quantity of things,” Bradshaw told HuffPost.

While it may seem like a good idea to skip breakfast on Thanksgiving Day (more room for turkey and pumpkin pie, right?), it can actually do more harm than good.

“What can happen when big eating events are coming up is that people tend to skip meals earlier in the day to ‘save’ all their calories for this meal,” Bradshaw said, “but that can cause some indigestion because your stomach still produces stomach acid [even if] you have no food to break it down.”

This can lead to a feeling of indigestion once you eat. Bradshaw added that skipping meals can cause blood sugar levels to drop and lead to overeating.

For breakfast, aim for a balanced meal with lean protein and fiber-rich carbohydrates that are slower to digest to keep your energy and blood sugar levels at good levels – think eggs, low-sugar Greek yoghurt or a protein shake, plus whole grains. bread or whole fruit (instead of juice). “These kinds of things will give you that energy in the morning so you won’t be hungry when you go to eat your Thanksgiving lunch,” Bradshaw said.

Therefore, a small snack between breakfast and the main meal (such as a piece of fruit or a quarter cup of nuts) can prevent you from overeating.

As usual, balance is the name of the game. With a big meal like Thanksgiving, it’s a good idea to do some physical activity to offset the extra calories you consume. St-Onge recommends doing more strenuous activities or workouts before meals and breaking up the festivities with some neighborhood walks.

In addition to burning calories, walking also aids digestion and provides a break from the table, which can be helpful in reducing the amount of mindless eating on Thanksgiving Day, and in general.

Ultimately, Thanksgiving is just one meal, and it’s okay to enjoy it without any guilt or other negative emotions. Bradshaw tries to remind customers who worry they won’t be able to enjoy their favorite foods on Thanksgiving that it’s just one meal. “We don’t have to have the same, exact, gigantic meal four servings or four days in a row,” Bradshaw said.

She works with people who have hunger signals on a scale ranging from 1 (starving) to 10 (full). “We don’t want to get stuck at these extremes,” Bradshaw said. “We want to stay around 3 to 8, where you’re hungry and then you get full, but you don’t stuff yourself, and that can be a good internal guideline on a day like Thanksgiving; I want to feel full, but not so full that I can’t walk and feel uncomfortable.”

The HuffPost/YouGov survey consisted of 1,000 completed interviews conducted among U.S. adults between November 14 and 16, using a sample selected from YouGov’s online opt-in panel to match demographics data and other characteristics of the US adult population.