For Night-Snackers: Does Eating Late Make You Gain Weight?
Of the sources of bad health information, I would not expect BBC News or About.com, but both of these otherwise highly credible websites have given wrong diet advice! They claimed that weight loss is only about calories, and that the time of day you eat is not important. Many people spread this claim as a “debunked myth,” when it is actually the myth itself. Learn a simple way to disprove it, and find out the real answer to whether eating at night leads to weight gain.
From BBC News:
Eating late at night does not make you fat, according to a study… Your body doesn’t really recognise what time of day it is. It is a little bit of a myth.
From About.com:
This is a very commonly-believed weight loss myth. But it doesn’t really matter when you eat, only how many calories you eat and burn in a day. Whether you’re eating in the morning or at midnight, your body turns any extra calories into fat.
Both these statements are partially true. Yes, your body does not know the time you eat. But your body knows when it needs energy, and that depends mostly on your physical activity levels and can be estimated by the time of day. Their claims are misleading because they encourage people to believe that time is not important in weight loss.
Want a simple counter-argument? Instead of eating your standard breakfast, lunch and dinner, combine those meals into one 30-minute session at the end of the day, and do not eat anything from the minute you wake up, to your meal at the end of the day. I guarantee you that you will be hungry, tired, unenergized and nauseated. Or why not just eat one week’s worth of food every Sunday? If weight loss were truly only about calories and time were not an issue, these situations would not impact you at all.
Let’s see what happens inside your body every time you take a bite.
What happens when you eat?
While you are eating, your body extracts nutrients from the food in your stomach. Your body uses as much as it needs and stores the remainder for later use. The excess energy is stored as fat.
How much energy your body uses and how much it stores as fat depends mostly on your basal metabolism and your current physical activity. Your body demands and uses more energy, for example, while exercising than while sleeping. Your body is more likely to convert your energy into fat if you eat at bedtime than if you eat while working out, even if you consume an identical amount of food.
Should I not eat late at night?
It depends. If possible, do not eat the same amount of food at night if you can eat it earlier in the day. But eating at night is not always bad. Sometimes, especially if you are hungry, eating a small snack gives your body the nutrients it needs, raising your metabolism and benefiting you more than if you went to bed with an empty stomach.
Diet advice
In general, eat a large breakfast, a decent-sized lunch, and a small dinner if you must stick to three meals, although six is better. This is not a strict restriction, and occasionally eating a large dinner, just like occasionally missing a workout session or forgetting to run for one day, will not have a significant impact on your health. If you usually eat clean and you suddenly crave a candy bar at 1:00AM, eat it - you will not suddenly gain twenty pounds. But if you do not take care of your diet, do not think that avoiding night-time eating will make you lose weight.
When you eat meals is an important factor not only for weight loss, but also for overall health. While eating at night may cause you to store more fat than if you eat during the day, the more important factor in weight gain or weight loss is your typical daily diet. Focus your energy on developing a proper diet, not limiting yourself from late-night cravings.
Hi there. I found your blog through the comments on another fitness blog and I am really impressed by your writing style. I agree with you on this one. Timing is important. However, I think whilst these articles are misleading their overall purpose was to let people know that they shouldn’t avoid eating late at night completely.
Aloha Tom,
Thank you for the compliment! And yeah, they probably wanted people not to react to late-night eating as “it is always bad.”
This is exactly why we have an obese society. Eating a proper diet at the correct times will improve your health, energy, and your waistline.
And what you eat at night makes all the difference in the world.
Hey Kiefer,
Yup, people can improve their health a lot just by shifting their meal times. But we should also know that what we eat and how we eat is just as important as when we eat.