Best time to stop eating on an evening?

Ignore all the don't eat after this time or no carbs after a certain time or it will turn in to fat. It's all about cals in vs cals out. I have ice cream before bed most nights if I have the calories left.

You know, in other countries (countries that don't have the obesity problem that we have in the US) people often don't eat dinner til 8 or even 9 at night. So I'd say that the "don't eat after ____" is bs.

Orphia wrote: »

hookahbinx wrote: »

I don't eat 3 hours before bed.
Am I hungry? Sure.
I just make sure I eat plenty during the day.
Works for me

I don't recommend this. Seems too extreme.

Why not?

The thing with keeping 3-4 hours of not eating anything before you go to bed has something to do with letting your body rest. If you eat something before you go to sleep your body is still digesting it while you sleep. Which means, you won't be fully rested. So it's best to eat enough during the day instead of having your body digest stuff in your sleep.

Ioras88 wrote: »

Orphia wrote: »

hookahbinx wrote: »

I don't eat 3 hours before bed.
Am I hungry? Sure.
I just make sure I eat plenty during the day.
Works for me

I don't recommend this. Seems too extreme.

Why not?

The thing with keeping 3-4 hours of not eating anything before you go to bed has something to do with letting your body rest. If you eat something before you go to sleep your body is still digesting it while you sleep. Which means, you won't be fully rested. So it's best to eat enough during the day instead of having your body digest stuff in your sleep.

Your heart keeps pumping, your lungs keep inflating, it doesn't stop you being rested.

Eating hours doesn't matter at all though I would advice to stop eating two hours before bed time.

Coincidentally, I've just received my weekly health report that shows that my sleep pattern is being disturbed. The comment in the email says "Avoid eating large meals before going to sleep as they can increase brain activity thus disrupting your sleep quality". I've no idea if this is true, as although I'll have a snack before bed I don't have a large meal.

CurlyCockney wrote: »

Coincidentally, I've just received my weekly health report that shows that my sleep pattern is being disturbed. The comment in the email says "Avoid eating large meals before going to sleep as they can increase brain activity thus disrupting your sleep quality". I've no idea if this is true, as although I'll have a snack before bed I don't have a large meal.

It can be. But many people who have disturbed sleep don't know that they may have sleep apnea too.

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I don't agree with most of you. Timing really matters. You shouldn't eat at lest 2 hours before you go to bed. Also, you cannot only calculate calorie deficit. 1 kcal from trans fats, or from simple carbs is less healthy than 1kcal from proteins or unsaturated fat.
I suppose your goal is not only to lose weight, but also to make your cardio system helthier. Besides that, timing of meals affects your pace of losing weight. I'm not big fan of chrono diet, but it has some very useful rules.

lionkingbg wrote: »

You shouldn't eat at lest 2 hours before you go to bed.

Assuming no digestive/sleep issues, why not?

Also, you cannot only calculate calorie deficit. 1 kcal from trans fats, or from simple carbs is less healthy than 1kcal from proteins or unsaturated fat.

You are mixing up units of measurement and nutrition. FOODS are (of course) not identical. Whereas individual foods aren't important (although I'd agree about avoiding trans fats) the diet as a whole is, and of course a diet made up mostly of highly processed carbs and trans fats or even saturated fat with inadequate protein and vegetables and fiber would be less healthy than many other diets (like the kinds of diets followed in blue zones or recommended by nutrition experts), this does not mean the calories within them are different. A calorie is simply a unit of measurement -- there is no such thing as "a calorie of chicken" that your body can distinguish from "a calorie of bacon." Are chicken and bacon different? Sure.

To make an analogy, once you put them in the bank, you can't distinguish between a dollar from capital gains and a dollar from income -- cash is fungible. Yet of course it matters in another sense how you got the money -- just ask the IRS.

timing of meals affects your pace of losing weight. I'm not big fan of chrono diet, but it has some very useful rules.

The studies are inconclusive and even as to those that suggest there may be some effect, it will be not much of one, less significant than compliance factors. If you hate eating in the morning and not eating in the evening, doing that will be counterproductive and not worth it even if you lose a little bit faster. (Personally I get home late so eat dinner late most evenings, and yet I lost consistently faster than MFP predicted. Might I have lost faster if I'd eaten earlier? I see no reason to think so, but even if it was theoretically possible, the fact I couldn't have sustained if I couldn't eat dinner or would have had to skip evening workouts to eat dinner (thereby burning fewer calories and taking longer to get fit) wouldn't have been worth the tradeoff.)

lionkingbg wrote: »

However, I have noticed you totally ignore the fact that early breakfast can speed up your metabolism. Another important thing: if you skip breakfast, your body will start storing fat in order to create long term "stocks".

How can I be ignoring it when you didn't make that argument before? Before you were talking about it being bad to eat too late (which I'm interested in because I eat late), and now you seem to have changed the argument to it being bad NOT to eat in the morning (which is of less interest to me in that I'm a breakfast eater, but which I also think is inaccurate).

So anyway, what's your evidence? I have seen nothing credible supporting that idea, and it's not likely that your body will start storing fat/drop metabolism due to one missed meal, let along that it will do that because of a missed meal at one time of day and not a missed lunch or dinner.

Do you have a source?

(You seem perfectly clear, btw -- much better than I could communicate in an language not my own.)