We are constantly bombarded by advice on what to eat. But what about how to eat? It turns out that this, too, can have a big impact on your waistline and your well-being.

Take mealtimes. Many of us eat our largest meal in the evening. It is worth rethinking this habit. Our bodies are more sensitive to insulin in the morning, meaning the postprandial spike in glucose falls faster after an early meal than after one late in the day. As a consequence, front-loading your daily food consumption is likely to reduce your risk of developing diabetes. It is good for gut health and digestion too. “Gastric emptying and overall gut motility are faster and many enzymes, peptides and bile acids are higher in the morning,” says Leonie Ruddick-Collins at the University of Aberdeen, UK.

You will also benefit from regular mealtimes. Eating helps regulate the genes that control your body clock, and the processes coordinated by it become disrupted if you change the times at which you eat. If weight loss is your aim, you can benefit even more from this by confining your meals to a shorter window. Simply by delaying breakfast for 90 minutes and having dinner 90 minutes earlier, people lost twice as much body fat over 10 weeks as those who kept to their usual mealtimes.

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How fast you eat matters too. Chewing each mouthful 100 times may be overdoing it, but you do eat less if you eat slowly …