Amy Poehler, 55, Finds an Upside to Getting Older and Eating Early

At 6:30, Amy Poehler, 55, isn’t thinking about dinner. She’s wondering why she hasn’t eaten yet.

“I love an early dinner.... I mean, it’s almost bedtime for me. What is it, 6:30?” she said in a WSJ. Magazine video interview published Oct. 28. “We need to be digesting by 6:45. We need to be on a walk.”

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The comedian hosts Good Hang With Amy Poehler, one of Spotify’s top podcasts in the U.S., where she most recently interviewed actor Noah Wyle. This time, the Parks and Recreation star and former Saturday Night Live cast member was answering questions, including how getting older has made her better at her job. 

“You also get a little more tired, and that’s good too,” she said. “Because you realize, like, the capacity that you have for things is maybe smaller, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

“You start to, like, curate what you care about more,” she said.

That evening, the interview cut into her preferred dinner hour. When asked whether she had plans to eat afterward, she pushed back.

“I can’t eat this late — 6:30?” she said.

So she proposed a compromise.

“I’m gonna have to have, like, a cold bologna sandwich and call it a night,” she said.

The topic of early mealtimes has come up before. While interviewing Gwyneth Paltrow in January, Poehler asked her what time she ate dinner. Poehler answered first in a faux-whisper: “I like it at 6.”

The case for eating earlier

While Poehler was joking about the hour, there really are benefits to eating earlier in the day.

“Think start early, end early,” Dorothy Sears, an Arizona State University professor who studies meal timing and health, told AARP. 

Her advice reflects how the body’s ability to handle food changes throughout the day.

“There’s definitely evidence to say that the earlier you start your eating window, and the earlier you end it, the better,” Sears said. “That makes sense, because we’re better at processing nutrients early in the morning.”

Why? Your body’s internal clock affects how it handles food. Researchers have been studying the connection between meal timing and health for years. Your body generally handles food better earlier in the day, when insulin, the hormone that controls blood sugar, works more effectively. Research suggests that shifting more of your food intake to earlier hours may improve blood sugar control and help with weight management.

What experience changes

Poehler has spent decades working in comedy, starting with improv comedy in Chicago (where she met longtime friend and collaborator Tina Fey). That history gives her something to draw on when a job goes wrong.

“Having experience and some wisdom, you have a lot of opportunities where things went badly and you survived. Like, you didn’t fall apart,” she said.

Age has also changed how she approaches the people and ideas around her.

“You get a little bit, hopefully, less certain,” she said. “So your certainty that’s really important in your 20s and 30s — like ‘I always,’ ‘I never,’ ‘I hate this,’ ‘I love this,’ ‘This is wrong,’ ‘This is right’ — starts to get a little hazier.

“And I think that’s a good thing for work, ’cause it keeps you more open-minded and curious and, I think, less rigid,” she said.