Eating Late

devils44

I know this must have been asked a 100 times, but is it okay to eat late? I workout in the morning and I was way under my macros even after dinner, so I ate another 500 calories after 8:30 pm. Am I doing more harm than good??

Mokey41

Your body doesn't care when you feed it.

Cindyinpg

No worries.:flowerforyou: I am a night owl and often eat late and it hasn't affected my progress. Meal timing and frequency is irrelevant to weight loss.

Fullsterkur_woman

No. You will turn into a pumpkin and explode.

DCruz83

No. You will turn into a pumpkin and explode.

lmao, sorry but that totally made me laugh!

To OP, no there is no problem as to when you eat... the only issue will come if you workout during the day and end up burning more calories than you have eaten up to that point! Other than that, eat whenever you want to, it doesn't really matter.

CaffeinatedConfectionist

There are no issues with eating late, unless you tend to get acid reflux from eating and immediately laying down. I eat most of my calories after 6pm, and usually eat right up until bed.

A useful read (specifically about eating carbs at night, but applies to eating in general):

http://www.biolayne.com/nutrition/carbs-at-night-fat-loss-killer-or-imaginary-boogeyman/

Especially relevant:

"Let’s tackle the issue of metabolic rate slowing down at night time first. The logic behind this theory seems reasonable enough: you lie down in a bed and don’t really move, just sleep, so obviously you are burning less calories than if you are awake doing stuff, even if you are just sitting in a chair or couch resting, you have to burn more calories than just sleeping right? At first glance this seems to jive with work from Katoyose et al. which showed that energy expenditure decreased during the first half of sleep approximately 35% (1). However, these researchers did show that during the latter half of sleep energy expenditure significantly increased associated with REM sleep. So, there are rises and falls in sleeping metabolic rate (SMR), but what is the overall effect? Interestingly, at the very least it does not appear that the average overall energy expenditure during sleep is any different than resting metabolic rate (RMR) during the day (2, 3). Additionally, it appears that exercise increases sleeping metabolic rate significantly leading to greater fat oxidation during sleep (4). This seems to be in line with data from Zhang et al. which demonstrated that obese individuals had sleeping metabolic rates lower than their resting metabolic rates, whereas lean individuals had sleeping metabolic rates significantly greater than their resting metabolic rate (3). So unless you are obese, not only does your metabolism NOT slow down during sleep, it actually increases! The idea that you should avoid carbs at night because your metabolism slows down and you won’t ‘burn them off’ definitely doesn’t pass the litmus test."

ItsAnIllusion

I often eat over half my calories for the day during dinner and evening time, and it hasn't slowed my weight loss any.

SLLRunner

I know this must have been asked a 100 times, but is it okay to eat late? I workout in the morning and I was way under my macros even after dinner, so I ate another 500 calories after 8:30 pm. Am I doing more harm than good??

It doesn't matter when you eat as long as you eat at a deficit, which you did.

For example, I got home from the gym tonight (one day a week my workout is after work, the rest of the time in the morning) and had dinner and desert at about 8 p.m.

swhiteism

I am a late eater. When I was a kid, we sometimes wouldn't eat dinner until 9 or 10. I just can't eat dinner at 5 and be okay for the rest of the night. I cook around 8 and save room for a snack before bed at 10. It hasn't affected my weight loss and probably keeps me from stuffing my face with something I shouldn't at midnight.

madtownjeremy

I'm a little late to the party here, but I'll chime in by saying that my Bodymedia says I burn through 2 calories per minute while I'm sleeping with a few spikes here and there from moving around, kicking cats off the bed, etc., which is the exact same rate as when I'm sitting at my desk in the afternoon. So I'd say @lauraceaerosa's post above definitely holds water and that the body doesn't really care when you put cals in, as long as when you add it all up you burned more than that.

willemjmartins

I am an athlete in competitive cycling and eating late does not work for me.

On an average training day, we burn an additional 2,000 calories, and on a race day it can be as high as 6,000. Replacing those as early as possible is really important, as endurance and recovery go hand in hand. When I sleep my body needs to recover and digesting a lot of food slows down the recovery process tremendously. The body now tries to do both being repair of damaged muscle and digesting food at the same time.

Having a hard day on the bike, with a big meal in the evening will have me wake up several times, sweating.

devils44

Thanks everyone for your comments