One concept that many people who are on weight loss diets struggle with is first off, whether it’s okay to have something to eat right before bed and then secondly, what the best choice is.
Many people are under the notion that you should try and avoid eating before bed as it’s much more likely that what you do eat will just turn to body fat. This however, is not necessarily the case.
Here are some factors you need to keep in mind.
Daily Total Calorie Intake On The Weight Loss Diet
First up, whether or not you lose weight is not going to depend as much on when you eat the foods you do, but rather, how much total food you’re eating each day.
In order for weight loss to happen, you should be aiming to eat fewer calories than your body burns each day through diet and simply maintaining itself (which is why more muscular people have an easier time with dieting – their body burns more calories on a daily basis, hence they can eat more food).
So, even if you are eating something at night, if that total calorie intake is still low enough that you are running a calorie deficit, you aren’t going to gain weight because of that late night meal.
Optimizing The Late Night Snack
Moving on, now that we’ve determined that you aren’t necessarily going to gain weight from eating at night while on a fat loss diet provided your total calorie intake is still in line, it’s time to discuss how you can optimize what you do eat.
Certainly, some foods are going to have a more negative effect on the hormones circulating throughout your body and how you feel, so it’s important to pay attention to this.
One thing you do want to avoid is eating a very large amount of protein right before bed (say 50+ grams), simply because protein is the macronutrient that is going to require the most energy for the body to digest, so then you might lay there in bed digesting your food and have a harder time getting to sleep.
Large protein meals do tend to keep people up, and since sleep is also critical to weight loss, this needs to be avoided.
Secondly, you also don’t want to be eating a very large dose of carbohydrates either, as that could cause insulin levels to rise significantly, and you could then experience a blood sugar crash halfway through the night, which would definitely not be a good situation.
Ideally you want the meal you eat before bed to contain a small amount of slow digesting protein (cottage cheese or lean meat are both good option), along with a small dose of healthy fat to provide energy through the nighttime period without effecting insulin levels.
If you do have troubles sleeping at night, then you might want to have a small dose of carbohydrates as well (avoid very refined carbs, however), as that will cause the body to release serotonin, which has a naturally calming effect on people and often makes them want to sleep.
So, if you want to eat before bed, eat. Just be sure your nighttime eating isn’t putting you over your calorie budget for the day and second, make some smart choices.
The primary reason why nighttime eating got a bad rap is because when you consider the typical foods people eat before bed (chips, popcorn, chocolate bars, soda, etc), they are very high in calories and are very likely to put you over that calorie total (not too mention these foods naturally make you just want to keep eating and eating and eating…..).
If you’re smart about your late night eating, you can certainly have a small and healthy snack before bed.
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