Grab Best Fitness Blog FeedWhen to eat ... by Karli Taylor
Being a fitness professional, I am always subject to other people's "secrets for success". I have heard so many weight loss gimmicks in the past ten years that I could write a book on debunking fitness myths- hmmm, not a bad idea....
Most of my favorite slim-down secrets involve odd eating practices. Have you ever heard someone say that their secret to staying thin is that they never eat after 6pm? Does that really work??
The old saying goes, “Breakfast for a king, lunch for a prince, dinner for pauper.” But do you need to eat less at night (i.e., after 6pm)? The simple answer is no, you don’t. Just make sure you don’t overeat at any of your mealtimes.
It’s hard to find any conclusive metabolic evidence that food eaten at night is more likely to be stored as body fat. Metabolism drops when you are sleeping, but that simply lowers your daily energy expenditure and its 24 hour energy balance (energy in versus energy out) that really matters for weight gain or loss. For fat loss, there appears to be no difference in success between eating the majority of your calories early in the day vs eating more in the evening, as long as total energy intake remains the same. Studies of people who eat the same number of daily calories with different meal timing in metabolic chambers fail to show a difference in metabolic rate between timing patterns.
Basically, it is not the timing of your last meal that may be impacting your waistline, but the amount of food we tend to eat late at night. Over consumption of carbohydrate or any food late in the day is the likely cause of weight gain related to nighttime eating. Think about it- when you sit down in front of the TV at night with a bag of chips, do you eat one serving? I know that I don't! For many of us, nighttime is the only time when we sit down for an extended period of time, and many of us use food to help us relax.
The lesson here is to watch your portion size no matter what time of day it is- and if you are hungry at 9pm, by all means, grab a snack! Being a fitness professional, I am always subject to other people's "secrets for success". I have heard so many weight loss gimmicks in the past ten years that I could write a book on debunking fitness myths- hmmm, not a bad idea. ... Most of my favorite slim-down secrets involve odd eating practices. Have you ever heard someone say that their secret to staying thin is that they never eat after 6pm? Does that really work??
It’s hard to find any conclusive metabolic evidence that food eaten at night is more likely to be stored as body fat. Metabolism drops when you are sleeping, but that simply lowers your daily energy expenditure and its 24 hour energy balance (energy in versus energy out) that really matters for weight gain or loss. For fat loss, there appears to be no difference in success between eating the majority of your calories early in the day vs eating more in the evening, as long as total energy intake remains the same. Studies of people who eat the same number of daily calories with different meal timing in metabolic chambers fail to show a difference in metabolic rate between timing patterns.
Basically, it is not the timing of your last meal that may be impacting your waistline, but the amount of food we tend to eat late at night. Over consumption of carbohydrate or any food late in the day is the likely cause of weight gain related to nighttime eating. Think about it- when you sit down in front of the TV at night with a bag of chips, do you eat one serving? I know that I don't! For many of us, nighttime is the only time when we sit down for an extended period of time, and many of us use food to help us relax.
The lesson here is to watch your portion size no matter what time of day it is- and if you are hungry at 9pm, by all means, grab a snack!
