I was just told to eat heavier at breakfast and very lite at dinner.

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Replies

  • PaulaWallaDingDong
    PaulaWallaDingDong Posts: 4,641 Member
    heybales wrote: »
    I just confronted him on what everyone said and he said if you eat alot late your body will turn that calorie energy into stored fat because you're not burning it

    Ask him what his body was burning then through rest of the day not eating as much to store up so much food for eating late.

    And for the whole day not eating that much you burned a bunch of extra fat and any workouts used up muscle glucose stores and your liver has gotten depleted too keeping blood sugar up.

    So now you eat late and the carbs go to refill those stores, and maybe some of the fat you eat goes back to fat - but you burned more during the day anyway, so you lost some.

    So by the end of the discussion - it worked out the same.

    He eats his big breakfast - there's only some liver stores to refill, so some carbs there, fat goes to fat, some is used for energy from the food rather than pulled from fat stores, but after 4-5 hrs he's back to the state you are in after 2-3 hours eating a lite breakfast. And since such a big meal for what his body really needs right then, those excess carbs not used for energy in that time range - those go to fat too.

    You're smart. Thank you.

    he said our bodies are designed around the Sun and we were made as hunters and gatherers and we need to taper off when it gets dark and we need to eat and work during the day if we eat heavy at night our bodies won't respond well to that.

    So eating whenever you can find calories, eating a lot when food is plentiful and little when food is not is the real way a hunter gatherer eats. The real question is why would this help weight loss in any way?

    Fun fact: that's how I wound up weighing 250 lbs at 5'3" (bmi of 44.3).
  • ekzokoltun
    ekzokoltun Posts: 3 Member
    I don't think many people here have deep knowledge of stuff like that, you'd better ask a dietitian. Now I'm not a scientist, but I'll use some common sense:

    Let's assume he is right for a minute and the calories you eat at night turn into fat. The equation should still work: if you eat less than you burn, you should lose weight. It's just that you'll mostly burn the fats you got at night instead of the food you ate in the morning if you eat too late. Not sure how it will affect your metabolism.

    I'm disappointed in how condescending and superficial some of the answers here are TBH. Don't take the rude messages seriously and good luck in your weight loss.
  • Chef_Barbell
    Chef_Barbell Posts: 6,644 Member
    ekzokoltun wrote: »
    I don't think many people here have deep knowledge of stuff like that, you'd better ask a dietitian. Now I'm not a scientist, but I'll use some common sense:

    Let's assume he is right for a minute and the calories you eat at night turn into fat. The equation should still work: if you eat less than you burn, you should lose weight. It's just that you'll mostly burn the fats you got at night instead of the food you ate in the morning if you eat too late. Not sure how it will affect your metabolism.

    I'm disappointed in how condescending and superficial some of the answers here are TBH. Don't take the rude messages seriously and good luck in your weight loss.

    No. Just no. Everything here is wrong because science.
  • Morgaen73
    Morgaen73 Posts: 2,817 Member
    ekzokoltun wrote: »
    I don't think many people here have deep knowledge of stuff like that, you'd better ask a dietitian. Now I'm not a scientist, but I'll use some common sense:

    Let's assume he is right for a minute and the calories you eat at night turn into fat. The equation should still work: if you eat less than you burn, you should lose weight. It's just that you'll mostly burn the fats you got at night instead of the food you ate in the morning if you eat too late. Not sure how it will affect your metabolism.

    I'm disappointed in how condescending and superficial some of the answers here are TBH. Don't take the rude messages seriously and good luck in your weight loss.

    No. Just no. Everything here is wrong because science.

    But bro-"science"!
  • ekzokoltun
    ekzokoltun Posts: 3 Member
    No. Just no. Everything here is wrong because science.
    I said "let's assume", I didn't say it was true.
    Is the advise to ask a dietitian instead of random forum people also wrong because science?
  • Chef_Barbell
    Chef_Barbell Posts: 6,644 Member
    Morgaen73 wrote: »
    ekzokoltun wrote: »
    I don't think many people here have deep knowledge of stuff like that, you'd better ask a dietitian. Now I'm not a scientist, but I'll use some common sense:

    Let's assume he is right for a minute and the calories you eat at night turn into fat. The equation should still work: if you eat less than you burn, you should lose weight. It's just that you'll mostly burn the fats you got at night instead of the food you ate in the morning if you eat too late. Not sure how it will affect your metabolism.

    I'm disappointed in how condescending and superficial some of the answers here are TBH. Don't take the rude messages seriously and good luck in your weight loss.

    No. Just no. Everything here is wrong because science.

    But bro-"science"!

    hhn.gif
  • Chef_Barbell
    Chef_Barbell Posts: 6,644 Member
    ekzokoltun wrote: »
    No. Just no. Everything here is wrong because science.
    I said "let's assume", I didn't say it was true.
    Is the advise to ask a dietitian instead of random forum people also wrong because science?

    That's not all your posts said. OP can do what they want, but as you said they asked a forum, so they are going to get a response.
  • LivingtheLeanDream
    LivingtheLeanDream Posts: 13,342 Member
    edited December 2016
    Its up to you how much you eat at each meal. The important thing for weight loss is having a calorie deficit.
  • paperpudding
    paperpudding Posts: 9,228 Member
    What your friend is doing works for HIM (since you did say he is healthy and lean) - so I guess he should stick with his big breakfast, light dinner before 6 pm, or whatever routine it was.

    Whether YOU will lose weight does not depend on you following same routine - it depends purely, simply, only on you eating at a calorie deficit.
  • Alatariel75
    Alatariel75 Posts: 18,032 Member
    heybales wrote: »
    I just confronted him on what everyone said and he said if you eat alot late your body will turn that calorie energy into stored fat because you're not burning it

    Ask him what his body was burning then through rest of the day not eating as much to store up so much food for eating late.

    And for the whole day not eating that much you burned a bunch of extra fat and any workouts used up muscle glucose stores and your liver has gotten depleted too keeping blood sugar up.

    So now you eat late and the carbs go to refill those stores, and maybe some of the fat you eat goes back to fat - but you burned more during the day anyway, so you lost some.

    So by the end of the discussion - it worked out the same.

    He eats his big breakfast - there's only some liver stores to refill, so some carbs there, fat goes to fat, some is used for energy from the food rather than pulled from fat stores, but after 4-5 hrs he's back to the state you are in after 2-3 hours eating a lite breakfast. And since such a big meal for what his body really needs right then, those excess carbs not used for energy in that time range - those go to fat too.

    You're smart. Thank you.

    he said our bodies are designed around the Sun and we were made as hunters and gatherers and we need to taper off when it gets dark and we need to eat and work during the day if we eat heavy at night our bodies won't respond well to that.

    OK. Well then to eat like a hunter gatherer would be like this: when you find/catch an animal or a cache of food growing in abundance, you gorge yourself on it, because many days you may not even eat, and you cant carry it or put it in a fridge since you are always walking hunting for food or gathering/digging for food. Most of the time yes you would eat light at night because you cant see to hunt or gather and dig. But if you were out hunting all day and brought the animal back to the campsite by nightfall, you'd gorge on the animal at night, maybe eat a few days worth of calories even.

    So eating whenever you can find calories, eating a lot when food is plentiful and little when food is not is the real way a hunter gatherer eats. The real question is why would this help weight loss in any way? Except for the fact you may be starving some days, and I'm pretty sure you arent going to do that part of the hunter gatherer subsistence diet...


    I cannot speak for all hunter/gatherer societies - but here in Australia - a mostly hot country with nocturnal animals - the indiginous people did often hunt at night and be more active generally at night - or certainly after what we would call 6pm.
    Because hunting animals at night makes sense if the animals are nocturnal and being active in extreme heat of the day is not great for humans either.

    More generally, in hunter gatherer societies, the food was gathered in daytime and eaten at night - there was only so many useful daylight hours and time to cook and eat wasn't among them. so the base premise is wrong.
  • paperpudding
    paperpudding Posts: 9,228 Member
    Yes - I did say I wasnt speaking for all hunter/gatherer societies - obviously all of them throughout the world did not hunt and gather nocturnal animals - or live in extremely hot environments.

    Come to think of it, those in the arctic extremes, probably hunted around the clock in the parts of the year that had almost 24 hour sun and stored food and did almost no activity during the months of long darkness.

    Which just goes to show that hunter gatherer peoples, like the rest of us, adjusted to what works in their environment.

    and all this has zilch to do with whether OP will lose weight. ;)
  • Alatariel75
    Alatariel75 Posts: 18,032 Member
    Yes - I did say I wasnt speaking for all hunter/gatherer societies - obviously all of them throughout the world did not hunt and gather nocturnal animals - or live in extremely hot environments.

    Come to think of it, those in the arctic extremes, probably hunted around the clock in the parts of the year that had almost 24 hour sun and stored food and did almost no activity during the months of long darkness.

    Which just goes to show that hunter gatherer peoples, like the rest of us, adjusted to what works in their environment.

    and all this has zilch to do with whether OP will lose weight. ;)

    Exactly, I was agreeing with you. The idea that we evolved only eating during daylight hours is highly flawed - gathering and hunting take daylight hours, eating was an activity that happened when there weren't other things to do.
  • ShammersPink
    ShammersPink Posts: 215 Member
    As everyone has said, the bottom line is how many calories you eat, not when you eat them.

    Some people find that they feel more satisfied and less likely to go off track if they consume those calories earlier in the day, others would find that made them wake in the middle of the night with the munchies.

    Likewise, some feel better with a small number of largish meals, others with a more snacky approach.

    Any eating pattern can work. Experiment to find what fits with your own lifestyle, mentality and appetite.
  • Verity1111
    Verity1111 Posts: 3,309 Member
    Machka9 wrote: »
    Where are you getting all these ideas?

    It's almost like you're going through a list of weight loss myths one at a time here and in the Food/Nutrition forum.

    Obviously from people and that's what this is for. To ask questions. Smh. Bye

    Ignore. People can be rude here. Who cares what you ask? Ask if water has calories for all I care. I think it doesnt matter when you eat really.
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