The Scoop on Night Time Eating

Posted by juleslein on March 23, 2009

"Eat breakfast like a king, eat lunch like a prince and eat dinner like a pauper." This maxim can be attributed to nutrition writer Adelle Davis, and since her passing in 1974, the advice to eat less at night to help with fat loss has lived on and continued to circulate in many different incarnations. This includes suggestions such as:

"Dont eat a lot before bedtime"
"Don't eat midnight snacks"
"Don't eat anything after 7pm"
"Don't eat any carbs at night"
"Don't eat any carbs after 3 pm"
and so on.

Eating lightly at night is usually very solid advice for people seeking increased fat loss, especially for people who are inactive at night.

Opinions on this subject are definitely mixed. Many highly respected experts strongly recommend eating less at night to improve fat loss, while others suggest that it's only calories in vs calories out over 24 hours that matters.

The critics claim that it's ridiculous to cut off food intake at a certain hour or to presume that "carbs turn to fat" at night as if there were some kind of nocturnal carbohydrate gremlins waiting to shuttle calories into fat cells when the moon is full. They suggest that if you eat less in the morning and eat more at night, it all "balances itself out at the end of the day."

Of course, food does not turn to fat just because it's eaten after a certain "cut-off hour" and carbs do not necessarily turn to fat at night either (although there are hypotheses about low evening insulin sensitivity having some significance).

What we do know for certain is that the law of energy balance is with us at all hours of the day - and that bears some deeper consideration when you consider that we expend the least energy when we are sleeping and many people spend the entire evening watching TV.

Experts say that the old 24-hour model of energy balance looks at calories in versus calories out in 24 hour units. However, what really happens is that your body allocates energy minute by minute and hour by hour as your body's needs dictate, not at some specified 24 hour end point.

Dr. Fred Hatfield first explained this concept about 15 years ago. Hatfield explained how and why you should be thinking ahead to the next three hours and adjusting your energy intake accordingly.

Although it's not really a new idea, Dr. Benardot has recently taken this concept to a much higher level of sophistication and he calls the new paradigm, "Within Day Energy Balance."
The Within Day Energy Balance

The Within Day Energy balance approach not only backs up the practice of eating small meals approximately every three hours, AND the practice of "nutrient timing" (which is why pre and post workout nutrition is such a popular topic today, and rightly so). it also suggests that we should adjust our energy intake according to our activity.

Let's make the assumption most people come home from work, then plop on the couch in front of the TV all night. Let's also assume that the majority of people go to bed late in the evening, usually around 10 pm, 11 pm or midnight. Therefore, night-time is the period during which the least energy is being expended.

If this is true, then it's logical to suggest that one should not eat huge amounts of calories at night, especially right before bed because that would provide excess fuel at a time when it is not needed. The result is increased likelihood of fat storage.

From the within day energy balance perspective, the advice to eat less at night makes complete sense. Of course it also suggests that if you do intense training at night, then you should eat more at night to support that activity.

Those stuck on a 24 hour model of energy expenditure would say timing of energy intake doesn't matter as long as the total calories for the day are in a deficit. But whoever decided that the body operates on a 24-hour "DAY".

Try this test (or not!):

Eat a 2500 calorie per day diet, with nothing for breakfast, nothing before or after your morning workout, 500 calories for lunch, 750 calories for dinner and 1250 calories before bedtime.

Now compare that to the SAME 2500 calorie diet with 6 small meals of approximately 420 calories per meal and then tweak those meal sizes a bit so that you eat a little more before and after your workout and a little less later at night.

Both are 2500 calories per day. According to "a calorie is just a calorie" and "24 hour energy balance" thinking, both diets will produce the same results in performance, health and body composition. But will they?

Does your body really do a calculation at midnight and add up the day's totals like a business man when he closes out the register at night? It's a lot more logical that energy is stored in real time and energy is burned in real time, rather than accounted for at the end of each 24 hour period.

David Barr wrote a tip on "lower carbs at night" for the bodybuilding website, T-Nation. He said:

"Even when bulking, you don't want to start scarfing down Pop Tarts before you go to bed. Our muscle insulin sensitivity decreases as the day wears on, meaning that we're more likely to generate a large insulin response from ingesting carbs. Stated differently, we're more predisposed to adding fat mass by eating carbs at night because our body doesn't handle the hormone insulin as well as it does earlier in the day."

Many programs suggest a specific time when you should eat your last meal of the day. However, I'd suggest avoiding an absolute cut off time, such as "no food or no carbs after 6 pm, etc," because people go to bed at different times, and maintenance of steady blood sugar and an optimal hormonal balance even at night are also important goals.

A more personalized suggestion is to cut off food intake 3 hours before bedtime, if practical and possible. For example, if you eat dinner at 6 pm, but don't go to bed until 12 midnight, then a small 9:00 pm meal or a snack makes sense, but keep it light, preferably lean protein, and dont raid the refrigerator at 11:55!

Setting a rule to eat fewer calories or to eat fewer carbs at night may be a superbly effective way to keep your daily calories in check and to match intake to activity, whereas people who are allowed to eat ad libitum at night when they're home, glued to the couch and watching TV, etc., may tend to overeat when the energy is not needed in large amounts.

source: http://www.formerfatguy.com/weblog/2007/02/night-time-eating-and-weight-loss.asp