Late night snacking

KMW1219

Late night snacking is a huge problem for me. Im pretty sure that it is the reason I have gained so much weight in the past few years. Me and my fiancé have different work schedules so the only time we get to see each other is from 10:30-12 at night. I usually come home from work and have dinner by 5. He gets home at 10:30 and that's when he will finally eat dinner. I always have such a hard time cause I want to eat with him too lol. So we always end up on the couch watching tv and eating.

So im curious to know what other people do in this situation and what are some healthy snacks yall keep around for times like these.

DavePFJ

I make sandwiches and deliver them to the homeless in my area.

Chrisparadise579

There is absolutely nothing wrong with late night snacking, in fact your resting metabolic rate is typically higher when you sleep, just make sure all your food fits into your daily allowance and you should be fine, keep up the great work

LoveTraveling

I'm not sure that Chrisparadise is right. I've read some article that suggest metabolism is lower at night. But the way I think about it, if you're not up around moving, you're not burning a lot of calories, so your metabolism would be lower when you're just sitting on the couch. I think this is particularly an issue with carbs, which will get converted and stored as fat since they're not immediately burned off.

Could you try an herbal infusion instead of snacking? Or perhaps a mostly water-based soup? Something easy to digest so it doesn't keep you up at night

futuremanda

LoveTraveling wrote: »

I'm not sure that Chrisparadise is right. I've read some article that suggest metabolism is lower at night. But the way I think about it, if you're not up around moving, you're not burning a lot of calories, so your metabolism would be lower when you're just sitting on the couch. I think this is particularly an issue with carbs, which will get converted and stored as fat since they're not immediately burned off.

Could you try an herbal infusion instead of snacking? Or perhaps a mostly water-based soup? Something easy to digest so it doesn't keep you up at night

Most "articles" about health, diet, fitness, metabolism especially, are spreading misinformation. Taking findings from one study (which you shouldn't do) and making the findings stronger in the article than they were in the study, for example.

When you eat does not matter for weight loss. Eat at night if you like to. You will not magically store more calories as fat because they came from carbs or because you ate them at 11 pm.

To make the snacking fit, you may need to plan ahead. Save some calories and have what you are going to eat in mind ahead of time. Log it ahead to see that it fits. Then eat that.

The reason it's been causing weight gain is that likely you treat it (calorie wise) like a second dinner. So if you're basically having 4 meals and not controlling the calories on them, that could easily cause weight gain. You'll have to plan so that it doesn't.