Metabolic Health: TEF, Lipaemia, and Your After-Meal Window

TEF is the energy your body burns to digest, absorb, and process a meal. Protein has the highest TEF at 20 to 30 percent of its calories, carbohydrate around 5 to 10 percent, and fat the lowest at 0 to 3 percent. TEF is real, measurable, and accumulates meaningfully across a year.

Lipaemia is the rise in triglycerides and chylomicrons after a fat-containing meal. It typically peaks 3 to 5 hours after eating and should clear within 6 to 8 hours. Persistent lipaemia drives inflammation, insulin resistance, and atherosclerotic risk.

The metabolic health composite combines both: how efficiently you process meals and how cleanly you clear them.

For body composition, prioritising protein at every meal raises your daily TEF by 100 to 200 calories without any extra effort. Across a year, that compounds significantly.

For longevity, post-meal lipaemia is one of the strongest predictors of cardiovascular event risk in the PREDICT cohort data. People with the same fasting triglycerides can have very different post-meal responses, and the post-meal response is the more dangerous signal.

Metabolic flexibility, the ability to switch cleanly between burning carbohydrate and burning fat, depends on both processes working well.

TEF lifters: protein-forward meals (eggs, NZ-caught fish, lean meat, Greek yoghurt, legumes), whole-food carbohydrate over processed, and meal frequency that suits your training rather than constant grazing.

Lipaemia flatteners: physical activity in the 12 hours before a high-fat meal, eating earlier in the day rather than later, fibre alongside the fat (not after), and avoiding back-to-back high-fat meals. Walking after a meal lowers the lipaemia peak by 20 to 30 percent.

Lipaemia lifters: late-evening fatty meals, alcohol with the meal, sedentary days, and the typical NZ takeaway combination of fat and refined carbohydrate together.

Your report shows estimated daily TEF based on your macro distribution and meal timing, alongside flagged meals likely to produce sustained lipaemia. We pair this with body composition scan changes in fat mass, lean mass, and visceral fat trend.

If TEF is running low, we look at protein distribution across meals, not just total daily protein. Most clients we see eat 60 percent of their protein at dinner, leaving the morning and lunch metabolically underpowered.

With Dr Matt Walley's PhD methodology and the NZ FOODfiles 2024 dataset behind the calculations, your report turns abstract metabolism science into the specific protein target for tomorrow's breakfast. Small, repeated wins.