I usually eat 2 meals a day. I’ll eat lunch at around 12:30PM and then dinner at around 10:30PM. People are always shocked that I eat dinner so late. Well, with 2 kids under 2, it’s tough for my wife and I to have dinner until that time. Especially since I don’t usually get home from work until 8PM, and then try to get out to the gym. After dinner, I’ll usually watch TV and go to sleep around 11:30PM.
I’ve heard from everyone that eating dinner so late is bad for you. The most common reasons that I’ve been given are 1) the food just sits there and 2) when you eat that late and then sleep, you can’t burn off the calories.
I don’t know whether they’re right, but these don’t strike me as valid. First of all, I doubt that the food just “sits” there. Does digestion stop when I’m sleeping? If so, why are people still hungry in the morning even when they’ve eaten a big meal late at night? Secondly, why does it matter that I’m not burning as many calories while I sleep? I’m still burning them during the day, right? It is necessary to burn calories immediately after I eat?
So is the “Don’t eat dinner too late” advice a myth, or is there any validity to it?
Sorry, I don’t have an answer, but my comment is that I’ve heard that eating late causes you to sleep poorly. I haven’t changed my eating habits becasue of that warning.
Apparently you shouldn’t eat late at night if you are concerned about gaining weight. According to WedMD:
“Eating breakfast has been shown to be one of the best ways to jump-start the metabolism. Studies also suggest that eating late at night can lead to weight gain because the body stores fat most efficiently in the middle of the night.”
“If you keep eating during the period when your body is winding down for the night, you are supplying fuel at the time when it most likely to be turned into fat,” she says.
People who have problems with gastric reflux disease (chronic heartburn, essentially) are told not to eat for an hour or two before going to sleep, the logic being that acid is more likely to escape the stomach & damage the esophagus when you’re lying down than when you’re sitting or standing upright.
As already stated, the reason that eating in the evening or at night can lead to weight gain is that the body is preparing to sleep, so unless that study made sure the monkeys had the same sleeping patterns, it can’t be a fair test. For example if one monkey sleeps at night and eats during the day, and another eats at night and sleeps during the day, it’s not surprising there would be no difference in weight gain between them. It’s not the time on the clock that matters, it’s the time of eating in relation to the time of sleeping, and it doesn’t appear that the researchers took that into account.
Well, one theory, not necessarily “The Reason.” Another theory is that eating late isn’t bad for you per se, but rather that, when people DO eat late at night, they rarely sit down to the same healthy sort of meal they might have eaten at 6PM, but instead pick at a lot of unhealthy, high-calorie junk, unwittingly upping their overall calorie intake.
Possibly, though I’d like to see actual cites of those studies that WebMD mentioned in passing (so that they’re not just mentioning anecdotal evidence and their own unsupported theory).
I’m going to second this with a cite and also a WAG: This advice may be valid even for the occasional heartburn sufferer. Since most people suffer from heartburn at some point in their life, this advice could potentially apply to most people.
In terms of weight loss, I think this is a myth. As we all know, weight loss/weight gain is dependant on 2 factors: calories taken in, and calories burned. Over a longer period of time, it won’t matter when you do either activity. IANAD but the chemistry set that is the human body takes into account all activities used to burn calories including sleep. I think the real question becomes: Does the energy it takes to get calories from fat differ significantly from getting calories from food in your stomach?
Sorry to disagree I eat basically one meal a day and have a great body. It IS calories in and calories out. All this metabolism stuff only refers to tiny amounts.
Did you notice the part in the study quoted
MAY?? What does that mean. MAY can also mean MAY NOT. This isn’t a study it’s a guess.
Welcome to reading and understanding scientific research, Markxxx. Legitimate studies very rarely (if ever) use definitive words like “must” or “will”, because you virtually never see results in a study which are 100% predictive and definitive. If you see a correlation, but it’s not 100% (and it pretty much never is), you use words like “may”.
It is to do with what you would eat inbetween your meals, and activity levels. If you eat late you won’tnecessarity be fatter, the same is true if you eat early.
Studies tend to use may when something is linked to something else, but not definitvely. For example:
People who drink more alcohol have a higher risk of getting lung cancer. This doesn’t mean that alcohol causes lung cancer (and we are pretty sure it doesn’t!), but for example, people who spent more time in pubs were more likely to inhale second hand smoke (before the ban obv). So alcohol conspumption is linked to lunger cancer - if you drink a lot of alcohol you may more likely to get lung cancer. Doesn’t mean you definately will or won’t. Also cancer isn’t just caused by one thing there are genetic factors and other environmental factors.
So going back to the eating thing - you can’t define clearly eating late makes you overweight > it is more complex than that!
I hope this makes sense and hasn’t been really boring!
Never been to Spain, but I’ve heard it’s the custom to have dinner late at night there. Is Nava in the house?
Think—How many fat Spaniards have you ever seen? (Don’t give Sancho Panza as a cite; he’s fictional.) I’m envisioning a sequel to French Women Don’t Get Fat—title it something like… Spanish Women Don’t Get Fat Either, and They Even Have Dinner Late at Night! Ha! Bet You Can’t Top That, France!
OP, I tend to nibble and graze through the day (6 small meals? snacks? dunno) and then one bigger meal just about right before I go to bed. It’s healthy for me because I a) have a fast-ish metabolism, and b) can’t eat what most Americans consider “a big meal” in one sitting. Some might say those two things alone are healthy. Anyway … I’m a light sleeper, and if I wake up early too hungry to fall back asleep, I have to get up and feed myself and mess up my whole sleep schedule for that next day. So, this works for me.
Also: I know your metabolism drops while you sleep, and that digestion is a metabolically-demanding task, but doesn’t the fact that your blood isn’t supporting a lot of limb movement mean more of it is available for your gut? The whole meme about not digesting during sleep always made me go :dubious: because I generally wake up anywhere from hungry to famished.
(And, not to get too TMI, but I’ve occasionally had cause to hit “rewind” on my stomach first thing in the morning, and, trust me, dinner ain’t in there anymore.)
I love the dont eat after 8 nonsense…what time do these people go to bed? I usually dont hit the sack until 2am, going 6 hours without eating then trying to sleep would piss me off on a regular basis. its just as absurd as the idea that every person needs 8 8oz glasses of water per day to not die. how is it possible that a 100lb girl needs as much water as my 225lb self needs?