I ran a workshop at The Organic Centre in Leitrim last month, and the questions people asked in the room were better than most of the content I make. So this week’s episode answers six of them, and here I want to take three of those a layer deeper to show you the evidence behind them.
“Doesn’t food order stop mattering the moment it hits your stomach?”
Surely it all mixes into the same soup in there. But your stomach isn’t a blender. It fills roughly in layers and empties gradually, releasing its contents into the small intestine (where absorption happens) bit by bit. So what you put in first actually does shape that journey.
Eat vegetables and protein before your carbohydrate, and they get there first: they slow how fast the stomach empties, blunt the rate at which carbohydrate is broken down and absorbed, and trigger gut hormones that help manage the response. In a neat crossover study, people ate an identical meal on two days, once carbohydrate-first, once carbohydrate-last, and the carbohydrate-last order produced substantially lower glucose and insulin afterwards. Same food, same person, but different order.
“I’m a night owl, so none of the morning light stuff fits my life.”
I used to say exactly this, with total conviction. But here’s the nuance. Some of our lark-or-owl tendency is genuinely built in: there’s a real genetic component, and I won’t pretend it doesn’t exist. But most of us are far less fixed than we believe, because our modern light environment exaggerates the whole thing: too little daylight by day, too much bright light by night, pushing the body clock later and later until we call the result our chronotype.
The evidence here is lovely. When researchers took people, including self-described night owls, camping for a week with only natural light, their body clocks synchronised to the sun within days, and the biggest shift happened in the night owls. Remove the artificial light, and much of the “owl” quietly dissolved. You don’t need to go camping, but more daylight in the morning and during the day and less light in the evening can make your chronotype far more negotiable than it feels; which is good news, because morning light and earlier eating/dimming of lights are two of the most useful levers there are.
Wright et al., 2013
“What has the nervous system got to do with my metabolism?”
More than almost anyone realises. The automatic part of your nervous system has two main modes. One is “fight or flight” (your stress response) and when it fires, your body releases hormones that, among other things, raise your blood sugar to give you quick energy. Which means stress alone raises your blood sugar, even with no food involved. This is useful if you’re running from danger but less so when the “danger” is your inbox, five days a week.
The other mode is “rest and digest”, and the name is the clue. Your body only really settles into digesting food properly when it’s calm. Eat in a rushed, stressed, distracted state and you’re asking your gut to work while your body is in the wrong gear for it entirely. So the state you bring to a meal isn’t separate from your metabolism - it’s part of it. (I go much deeper on this in the stress-and-digestion episode.)
Three more, just briefly
Porridge isn’t “good” or “bad”: eaten by itself, it’s fast carbohydrate, but dressed with Greek yoghurt, nuts, seeds and berries, and it’s a steady, satisfying breakfast. On weight in perimenopause: energy balance is real, but “just eat less” is poor advice when oestrogen is reshaping your hunger, your muscle, your sleep and your blood sugar. Supporting the system beats willpower, every time. And a question about running to relieve stress: for a nervous system already stuck in overdrive (wired all day, rushed off your feet, then crashing), hard exercise can sometimes add to the load rather than release it; gentler movement often serves better until things settle. Notice how a workout leaves you feeling, and let that guide you.
None of this is medical advice, but if there’s one theme running through all of this, it’s that the best questions are rarely the ones with yes-or-no answers.
If you’ve got a question for a future round, send it my way. And if you’d like a proper conversation about your own situation, I have 3 spaces left for my free 30-minute Metabolic Audits this month.
Thank you for being here.
See you next week,
Frances x
Frances Norgate
Qualified Nutrition and Lifestyle Advisor
francesnorgate.com
