Consuming 80% of your calories an hour before bed.

No, I eat most of my calories at night and I did that the entire time I was losing weight. Between dinner and drinks, it's not uncommon for me to have 1,000-1,100 calories between 6 and 9 PM and still hit my calorie goal for the day. I'm like you -- a big breakfast or lunch doesn't stop me from wanting that big dinner experience (and since it's the only meal my husband and I eat together, there is a social component to cooking and eating well at night that I don't want to give up).

The best meal timing is the one that fits your lifestyle and helps you hit your calorie goal. It sounds like you may have found yours!

Not at all. The more fit I get the more I see my calories drifting to the evening meal. I have a light breakfast and lunch and maybe a snack somewhere in between, but I workout times are in the afternoon/early evenings and I don't want a belly full of food sloshing around when I running around and lifting heavy stuff.

To each his own. Often times, I save my calories for a treat before bed (usually strawberries and grapes with a little Redi-Whip LOL) but I try to split the rest up throughout the day in little increments. Some people opt for fasting. For me, if I fasted and only at 20% of my full day's worth of calories throughout the day and saved the rest for night, I would be starving and end up stuffing my face. Meal timing isn't really relevant (unless you're doing bodybuilding) - it's just about calories in vs. calories out. So you do you girl!

laura7161 wrote: »

rdridi12 wrote: »

I agree that you don't need to worry about meal timing as a regular person just trying to get to a healthy weight, but while incorperating a couple beers with your meal each night, it might have a slightly bigger effect on the effeciency of your weightloss, not to say you wont lose weight, but it may slow your progress down had you done it differently.

Could you elaborate? Does alcohol effect efficiency? Like does it effect my matabolism? Does time of day matter? Like, if I had those same beers earlier or separate from my meal, would that matter? Does the type of drink matter? Like is a cocktail better than beer? Thanks for the info!

When you have alcohol in your system, all other metabolic functions are on hold while you metabolize the alcohol...meaning you aren't burning fat or utilizing energy from the food you're consuming at that specific time. Beer is kind of a double whammy because it has alcohol sugars that must be immediately metabolized as well as other carbs/sugars...those other carbs/sugars would just be stored and put on hold.

When I'm cutting I typically stick to booze and a diet mixer...booze is all sugar alcohol so there's nothing additional to store when I'm drinking it...also because it's less calories than the kinds of beers I would typically drink, so much easier to work in.

That said, in the end if you're accounting for the calories, the difference should be pretty negligible though somewhat more efficient without the alcohol.

cwolfman13 wrote: »

laura7161 wrote: »

rdridi12 wrote: »

I agree that you don't need to worry about meal timing as a regular person just trying to get to a healthy weight, but while incorperating a couple beers with your meal each night, it might have a slightly bigger effect on the effeciency of your weightloss, not to say you wont lose weight, but it may slow your progress down had you done it differently.

Could you elaborate? Does alcohol effect efficiency? Like does it effect my matabolism? Does time of day matter? Like, if I had those same beers earlier or separate from my meal, would that matter? Does the type of drink matter? Like is a cocktail better than beer? Thanks for the info!

When you have alcohol in your system, all other metabolic functions are on hold while you metabolize the alcohol...meaning you aren't burning fat or utilizing energy from the food you're consuming at that specific time. Beer is kind of a double whammy because it has alcohol sugars that must be immediately metabolized as well as other carbs/sugars...those other carbs/sugars would just be stored and put on hold.

When I'm cutting I typically stick to booze and a diet mixer...booze is all sugar alcohol so there's nothing additional to store when I'm drinking it...also because it's less calories than the kinds of beers I would typically drink, so much easier to work in.

That said, in the end if you're accounting for the calories, the difference should be pretty negligible though somewhat more efficient without the alcohol.

Source for the first statement? I've heard this before, but I have never seen where this comes from. Just going by alcohol metabolism rates, and some common sense, this seems unlikely to impossible. At my weight (150 lbs), 3 shots of 80 proof liquor at 291 calories would take 5-6 hours to metabolize. My sedentary TDEE is ~100 cal/hour. I still need to metabolize 300 calories from other sources (fats/carbs/proteins) to make up the difference.

In addition, so what if alcohol is burned first? Carbs in the form of glycogen are burned preferentially during hard aerobic exercise, but this doesn't affect body fat loss (hence the misconception of the "fat burning zone" and low intensity exercise being preferable for losing weight). This misses the forest from the trees.

There is no such thing as alcohol sugars... There are "sugar alcohols" in the form of low calorie sweeteners, but that has nothing to do with what's in booze. Alcoholic drinks contain alcohol, and sometimes carbs/sugars depending on what you're drinking.

If alcohol has anything to do with weight loss, it's probably more to do with the other decisions that get made when you are drinking alcohol...

ForecasterJason wrote: »

While it wouldn't directly impact weight loss, for a lot of people that amount of digestion may negatively affect sleep. If I ate a meal that large that close to bedtime, I would probably toss and turn for a long time.

Same. Also why I don't drink coffee in the afternoon, it impact MY sleep. But that's a personal thing, so if it doesn't impact sleep, no reason to not eat that late.

I used to do this and then wondered why I had so many insomniac nights. Now if I eat before 6pm, I sleep like a baby. And yes, I tried just cutting the caffiene before 6pm first but it didn't matter. If I eat food before I go to bed, I lie awake listening to my body digesting it and my mind using the added fuel to race along on ridiculous tangents.

I log mine in 3 meals but I only have a 280 calorie lunch and then 5pm+ I eat the other 1300. Makes zero difference.