‘When you eat matters as much as what you eat’: Coach Dan Go explains where you're going wrong with intermittent fasting

Skipping breakfast in the name of intermittent fasting can do more harm than good. Dan explains how your metabolism handles late dinners and skipped meals.

Intermittent fasting may sound like a simple formula for weight loss: eat within a certain window, fast for the rest and watch the kilos drop. But what if you have been following the fasting window and still not seeing the results you expected? The timing of your meals may matter more than you realise. Eating a late dinner and simply carrying your fasting window into the next morning may not be the metabolic reset you think it is.

Dan Go, a high-performance health and fitness coach with more than 20 years of experience, is breaking down where you might be going wrong with intermittent fasting. In an Instagram video shared on August 25, the fitness coach explains how eating late at night and consequently skipping breakfast may work against your metabolism, emphasising that “when you eat matters as much as what you eat.”

The right way of intermittent fasting

Intermittent fasting is a pattern of eating that prioritises when you eat, instead of what you eat. It goes back and forth between regular periods of eating and restricted periods of fasting. Many people perceive this as a free pass to skip breakfast, especially if a late dinner pushes the fasting window into the morning. However, Dan highlights that routinely skipping breakfast could potentially work against your metabolism.

Instead, he recommends having an early dinner. The fitness coach explains, “The best way to fast is not by skipping breakfast. It's actually having an early dinner. So, most people skip breakfast and call it intermittent fasting, but they're fasting on the wrong side of the clock, and it's the reason they're not getting the results they want. When pre-diabetic men ate all their food before 3 pm for five weeks, their insulin sensitivity improved, blood sugar dropped, and appetite went down.”

Your body handles food better in the morning

Dan also points out that your body is naturally better equipped to process food in the morning, when hormones and digestive enzymes are more active, than at night, when the body begins to wind down. Your metabolism is closely tied to your circadian rhythm, which prepares your body to use energy and process food during the daytime. Hence, eating late at night may work against your body’s internal clock and disrupt its natural rhythm.

The fitness coach notes, “Your body also handles food better early in the day as opposed to later. Your insulin sensitivity is high in the morning and falls off at night. The same meal at 8 pm can spike your blood sugar harder than 8 am. Your metabolism has a bedtime and it's earlier than when you sleep.”

What happens when you eat late at night?

Health practitioners often recommend having dinner earlier and avoiding food too close to bedtime, and there is a good reason behind this advice. Dan explains that eating right before sleep can interfere with your body’s natural wind-down process and potentially disrupt your sleep cycle. As your body prepares for rest at night, introducing a new meal means your digestive system still has to work on processing and metabolising the food, rather than shifting fully into its restorative overnight state.

The fitness coach further elaborates, “Eating close to bed wrecks your sleep. Meals within three hours of bedtime raise your core temperature, delay melatonin release, and also increase nighttime awakenings. When you have bad sleep, it tanks tomorrow's hunger hormones, causing an uncontrollable appetite loop. And last, your worst food decisions are made at night. When you're tired and when your willpower is down, it makes you reach for that bowl of cereal you didn't plan for.”

According to Dan, one of the simplest ways to break this pattern is to “close the kitchen” a few hours before bedtime. He explains, “Closing the kitchen early removes that habit entirely. You don't need a fancier fasting protocol. Just close your kitchen by 6 or 7 pm. Do it at least three to five hours before you go to sleep and let your body do its work overnight.”

Note to readers: This article is for informational purposes only and not a substitute for professional medical advice. It is based on user-generated content from social media. HT.com has not independently verified the claims and does not endorse them.

Dan Go is a prominent fitness and high-performance health coach with over 20 years of experience, who helps busy professionals lose fat, build muscle, and optimise their longevity without sacrificing their careers. He shares practical, science-backed lifestyle protocols across his coaching platform and social media.