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What and when you eat at the end of the day can have a large
impact on your weight. If you eat the right thing at the right
time you can actually lose weight while you sleep. Eat the
wrong thing at the wrong time and you can plan on waking up
with a little more body fat in the morning.
To succsufully loss weight, you'll need to stop eating two
- three hours before going to bed. YOu shold not feel starving
before bed but you should feel slightly hungry. When you're
trying to lose weight, slipping into bed at night feeling
slightly hungry is actually a good thing. It's your body telling
you that what you did that day is working -- you're losing
body fat. If you don't feel this way, you're probably not
losing fat.
Now lets say you follow your brain's directive and eat close
to bedtime, your body will not dip into the fat it has stored
away, and will probably even store some more. Every time you
eat, your metabolism increases slightly. But this effect is
lost or minimized late at night. You don't get the same metabolism-boosting
benefit when you eat just before bed, because a couple of
hours after dinner, your body begins preparing for sleep.
This natural slackening of your metabolic rate overrides any
metabolic boost you might get from eating. So once you hit
the pillow, the only calories you're going to use are the
basic calories you need to keep your heart beating and your
lungs breathing and allow your eyes to move in REM sleep.
This is only a minimal number of calories.
Believe it or not, eating late at night can also inhibit your
calorie-burning potential the next day. Say, for instance,
that you treat yourself to a sandwich and some fat free chips
at 9.:30 P.M. one night and are fast asleep by 10:30. When
your alarm goes off the next morning at eight, the last thing
on your mind is going to be breakfast -- you're still full
from the sandwich and fat free chips you ate the night before.
Chances are, you're going to skip breakfast and lose all the
metabolism-boosting benefits you'd get from eating a morning
meal.
Things to Remember:
• Eating too much food, especially carbohydrates, late
at night increases your body fat stores
• Eating high-glycemic carbs (pasta, potatoes, white
rice, sugar, etc.) right before bed will spike your insulin
levels and blunt nighttime Human Growth Hormone (HGH) production.
• That's very bad because about 80% of this fat-burning,
muscle-building "super hormone" is released during
sleep.
• If you fast for 11 hours (8 PM to 7 am for instance)
your body will begin burning significant amounts of fat around
the 5th hour (1 am) and continue to do so until you wake up.
Here are a few simple tips to make sure you get the
most from your last meal of the day:
• Eat about 3 hours before going to bed - you'll have
some time to burn off calories but you probably won't get
too hungry before going to sleep
• Eat frequently throughout the day - small, healthy
meals and snacks spaced about 3 hours apart - to minimize
hunger cravings at night
• Your last meal should consist mainly of a lean protein (like baked chicken breast) and low-calorie, fibrous carbohydrates
(veggies and fruits) - avoid all starchy carbs close to bedtime
(breads, pastas, rice, potatoes, etc.)
• If, like many of us, you get big-time carb cravings
right before bed.....eat some carbs! Just make sure they're
the high-fiber, low-glycemic kind: apples, berries, peaches,
plums, bran cereal, fresh vegetables, vegetable juice, etc.
• If you're currently strength training to build muscle,
a great end-of-the-day meal option is low-fat cottage cheese
(full of slowly-digested casein protein) with no-sugar-added
fresh or canned fruit.
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