More evidence for Not Eating Late

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Replies

  • _Tristan_
    _Tristan_ Posts: 221 Member
    Thanks for posting. Good information and I'll try it.
  • blancafh
    blancafh Posts: 9 Member
    I'm from Spain and living in the UK now and I can't for the life of me eat at 6 or 7pm like most people do here. And I never eat dinner before 9pm and I'm still losing weight consistently so I still don't believe in this. If I'd eat at 6-7pm I would be so hungry by midnight that it it would be quite easy to end up snacking too much.
    We usually have a snack around 11am, then we have lunch around 2-3pm, another snack around 6pm and dinner at 9-10pm. I just think is quite sensitive, instead of having a big time gap between dinner and bed time you get to eat every 3 hours or so, so you don't risk overeating.
    Yes, but this all depends on what time you go to bed. If you eat a large dinner at 9 and go to bed at midnight, you are eating 3 hrs before bedtime. If someone eats a large dinner at 6pm and goes to bed at 9pm, it is the same thing. the times aren't the issue - it is the time between your largest meal and bedtime. Are you eating dinner as your largest meal?

    I guess is a personal thing, I just don't like going to bed hungry and since I go to bed late (12-1am) it would be impossible for me to eat my last meal before 7pm. I eat a bit more for lunch but like I said my meals are quite balanced throughout the day so I never go to bed with a really full stomach because by then I don't have a big number of calories left to eat.
  • ladymiseryali
    ladymiseryali Posts: 2,555 Member
    I guess it's a good thing I'm trying IF........
  • Diary_Queen
    Diary_Queen Posts: 1,314 Member
    For me, eating late isn't the problem, but feeling full is vastly related to sleep patterns for me. If I'm very sleepy, I find I want to eat more in the evenings to hit the food coma level and combat insomnia... that was a big problem for years. I find myself being more mindful of how much I eat in the evenings so I'm not eating for a reason other than hunger/nutrition. If I eat a bigger breakfast and make lunch my biggest meal then workout after lunch and have a more modest evening meal, I find that I'm less prone to overeat or mindlessly snack while packing away leftovers or packing lunches for myself/my kids the next day. I'm a grazer so I tend to have lots of random nibbles through the day. When that gets started at night, I feel like a bottomless pit.
  • LiftAllThePizzas
    LiftAllThePizzas Posts: 17,857 Member
    Every time the meal timing question comes up, I have to ask: what if you're eating dinner on a plane and you cross time zones? Or what about daylight savings time? If I have to stop eating at 6PM, does that get pushed back to 7PM when we spring forward?

    So far, I have yet to receive a satisfactory answer, which tells me that meal timing doesn't matter much.

    I feel like I'm watching Gremlins all over again. I always wondered that as a kid. If you can't feed Gizmo after midnight then when does the clock reset? 1pm the next day is still after midnight.
    Yeah but if nobody can pick up Thor's hammer except Thor, what if Thor picks up his hammer and then the Hulk picks up Thor, and then feeds him to Gizmo?
  • SanteMulberry
    SanteMulberry Posts: 3,202 Member
    What may be important here is the proximity to bedtime. Studies have shown that high insulin at bedtime (which may be the case if a large meal is eaten in the evening) means that a smaller amount of human growth hormone (which is primarily secreted during the first hours of sleep) will be secreted. Adequate levels of human growth hormone are part of the weight loss picture. Meal-timing probably won't make a lot of difference if the dieter is in his/her 20s but it becomes more important with age, as levels of HGH fall as we age. Hormones ARE important.
  • Picualina
    Picualina Posts: 2
    Hi everyone! As a good Spaniard I've been having my main meal at 2pm for 28 years. When I moved to Germany two years ago and I 'had' to eat proper dinner I put on weight. Not surprisingly at all since clever me was having a Spanish lunch (because my body was used to feel hungry at 2pm) and then dinner (as customary in the new country). A few months later I lost all the weight I had put on and I adjusted to my new German eating times. I say the study group that ate in the evening 1-cheated a bit (which I fully understand! ;) or exercised less or 2-was very stressed (In Spain like in any other country working times and life in general are connected to eating times). In my humble opinion, it doesn't really matter when you eat, as long as you are consistent, don't mess up your eating routines and your body 'agrees' with it.

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