The unholy trinity 33 The energy mismatch When I ask people to tell me how their typical eating day goes I usually hear a story something like this:‘ Well I always start the day with a healthy, light breakfast, maybe a piece of multigrain toast and a cup of decaf coffee with skim milk, no sugar of course. I don’ t have any morning tea because I know I shouldn’ t snack, and then for lunch I normally have a salad.’ Let’ s just interrupt this narrative for a moment. What is wrong with this picture? Yes, you guessed it. This eating pattern only achieves one thing – starvation! What’ s next? Well, usually, chocolate. Anecdotal evidence shows that chocolate is most frequently consumed for afternoon tea. But the trouble is it doesn’ t stop there. This is just the beginning. To continue the narrative,‘ I then have the main meal of the day, usually meat and vegetables. For dessert I might have a couple of scoops of ice cream with fresh fruit, and then I might grab a chocolate Tim Tam while I go and watch some television.’ More quietly they will often admit to me how, quite inexplicably, the whole packet of Tim Tams follows them to the lounge and then magically they all disappear by the time the show is finished! Most people I talk to do their( over) eating at the end of the day.‘ What is wrong with this?’ you might ask. Firstly, what it means is that we do most of our eating when we least need the energy! Have a look at the graph on the next page. The dotted line graphs our energy output through physical activity. It peaks early as we rush off to work, again in the afternoon as we leave work, then it drops away completely as we settle in for the evening. Cleverly, we manage to completely mismatch this with our food intake which peaks after we wind down for the day. We end up eating most of our food just before we go to bed and do a big fat nothing for the next eight hours or so! So in the morning when our metabolism and energy burn rate are increasing in response to physical activity we’ re