Eating Most Calories Right Before Bed - Does It Make That Much of A Difference?

[Jazee]

Let's say the number of calories you burn everyday always really close to 3000 calories. Let's say 300 of those calories (10 percent) comes from daily exercise in the morning before breakfast.

Let's say you want a 3500 calorie deficit per week (500 per day) in order to lose around a pound of weight, hopfully mostly fat.

So then let's also assume you are always eating about 2200 calories a day (3000 - 300 exercise = 2700 - 500 deficit = 2200 for food)

Let's say your diet for the entire day is balanced, like 20% protein, 40% carbs, 40% fats.

BUT, let's say you eat only 30% of your calories before dinner and you eat a late dinner, about 2-3 hours before bed. At dinner you eat 70% of your calories, and it's 60% carbs and those carb calories at dinner are from beer and wine and pasta.

If your daily calorie deficit is ALWAYS 500 calories and you eat this way, then aside from it not being very healthy, doesn't the body still lose the same weight because the body can't manufacturer its own calories out of nothing?

The reason I ask this, is because there is a lot of advice about not eating a lot of carbs before bed as the blood sugar goes up and instead of burning fat during the night, your body stores fat. But If you still have a 500 calorie deficit, isn't the fat burned the next morning/afternoon anyway? There's all this talk about your body being in starvation mode, cortisol, etc. etc. But a 500 calorie deficit, IS a 500 calorie deficit. Is the problem that eating this way will essentially lower your BMR so in fact, your body starts burning less calories somehow, even with the same amount of activity everyday?

[csb5731]

Meal timing is for the most part irrelevant to weight loss. When I diet I tend to eat the majority of my calories around 8:00 pm, and generally most of my daily carbs.

That said, I think your macros aren't necessarily optimal from a "dieting"/body-composition standpoint. Unless you are very small (in which case I suspect your TDEE estimate is way off), that's not a lot of protein. From the fat loss perspective (satiety, lean mass preservation) it makes sense to emphasize protein a little more.

[matman1813]

It is irrelevant, what you hear is broscience. Think about it like this, energy cannot be created or destroyed, right? Working from this, energy in has to be equal to out (calories in / calories out). Your fat stores are potential energy, they are stored calories. If you eat 2000 calories a day and use 2500 calories a day, those other 500 calories have to come from somewhere, fat storage. It doesn't matter when you get them, the equation has to balance.

[missladyj]

There is actually an argument that this is an optimal way to eat...supposedly it most most resembles how we probably ate according to our genes (which are the same as our ancestors from 100,000 years ago). We spent morning / afternoon hunting and foraging, while most calories were consumed in the evening when the day slowed down and edibles were done being collected.

Can find out more at: http://www.warriordiet.com/

[drewams]

Calories In < Calories Out

Lose Weight

http://forum.bodybuilding.com/showth...hp?t=129247741

[Brad805]

Here is a link to an Article by Layne Norton on this topic. Not really critical.

http://www.biolayne.com/nutrition/ca...ary-boogeyman/

[megdaig]

When you eat your calories doesn't matter for weight loss so long as you are in a caloric deficit. The only timing consideration may be to consume quite a bit if your calories ahead of your workouts to give you energy to push hard.

When cutting I worked out between 9 and 10 PM and did cardio after...that often left me eating my last meal around midnight...don't think it affected me as evident in my progress.

[angelo212121]

I eat most of my meals at night & I still lost weight.

[Jazee]

Here is a link to an Article by Layne Norton on this topic. Not really critical.

article link

This article is awesome. Granted you have to take everything you read these days with a grain of salt, especially anything to do with dieting, this article is logical. Now I won't feel guilty if I have a Ham sandwich right before I go to sleep instead of going to sleep hungry and having a harder time getting to sleep! It's all about the calories and being reasonably balanced in diet and physical activity IMHO.