We've all heard the argument. We've all heard both sides of the story.
So is eating late at night, bad for you.
Let's investigate.
So before we even get started today, let's make one thing very, very clear.
Let's get it out of the way. Eating.
Late at night is not bad for you. Now,
the problem with the term "bad" is it's a very umbrella term, right?
It kind of just leads you towards that.
This is something that should never be done. And if you categorize it as that,
when you actually do it, whether it's by accident or on purpose,
a lot of people have the experience of feeling very guilty and shameful around
doing which ends up making their weight loss efforts,
even worse for their health efforts, even worse. So in this video,
we're really going to dive in if eating late at night is bad for you,
but if it is healthy, right,
or even if it is making it more difficult for you to lose weight,
or if it's preventing your weight loss efforts. So is eating late at night,
making it more difficult for you to lose weight and improve your health?
So the science says "maybe." Now,
just like everything else that we discussed on this channel,
this is a very holistic approach. So it's not just a yes or no.
There are a lot of different factors that go into it.
So let's look at the science. So from a very logical standpoint,
if we look at eating late at night and we think about how the body digests,
we can just assume that the energy that the body takes to
digest possibly could be going other places while we're asleep. Right?
If we have a hundred points of energy for recovery, for digestion,
for all the other processes of the body, if we're not digesting at night,
logically that energy that would normally go to that could now be going to more
beneficial things like repairing cells, like boosting recovery, boosting energy,
all the things that our body is required to do while we're asleep at night.
So of course, to back this up, we want to see if we have studies on this, right?
Let's see if we can get some research here.
So the first study that I found was in the journal of clinical endocrinology and
metabolism, basically in this study,
researchers took 20 healthy volunteers to see how they metabolize meals
eaten at 10:00 PM and 6:00 PM.
So all participants went to bed at 11:00 PM and researchers found that blood
sugar levels were higher with the later dinner,
even when the same meal was eaten on a different day at an earlier time.
So on average,
the peak blood sugar level was about 18% higher than the amount of fat burn
overnight decreased by 10% compared to the earlier dinner. Right?
So there's been a lot of research in the past about the connection between high
blood sugar and cardiovascular issues, diabetes, obesity.
So this study shows that potentially if you're eating later at night,
your body may be more likely to spike that insulin and potentially burn less fat
and slow down your metabolism throughout the night. Another study.
So researchers at Northwestern university found that eating at night led to
twice as much weight gain,
even when total calories consumed were the same, how this was a study on mice.
So there can be some arguments there if that's actually going to be similar in
human studies. But the truth is that this does make sense, right?
If we're eating, if we're consuming this food,
our body's going to have to go through different processes and expend its energy
in different areas throughout the night.
Whereas if we were just going to not consume that food,
then our body could spend its energy points going somewhere else,
wouldn't have to spike insulin. It wouldn't have to regulate that blood sugar.
It wouldn't have to do all these things that is required when we consume food.
Now, with that being said, there's also another side to the story.
So I wanted to pull up some research that said otherwise,
and then kind of explore potentially why this could be happening and what this
means. So there's a study done by John Hopkins university in Baltimore.
And this suggested that meal timing doesn't necessarily make a difference for
weight loss, as long as you're eating the same amount of total calories.
And so what researchers did is they looked at 41 overweight adults over the
course of 12 weeks and half the participants eat most of their calories before
1:00 PM. While the remainder ate a majority of calories after 5:00 PM.
Now with this,
it's a little bit more difficult to interpret those results because eating at
5:00 PM or five 30 or even six is going to be a lot different than eating at
11:00 PM or midnight, or, you know,
five minutes before you lay your head down on your pillow.
So when it comes to that one, that study,
because it's not specifically right before bed,
there may be mixed results there,
but there is also another study in the journal of nutrients that found that a
nighttime consumption of small single nutrients or mixed meals does not
appear to be harmful and may actually be beneficial well for muscle protein
synthesis and cardio-metabolic health. Now, again,
this could be interpreted a little bit differently because a small meal could be
a little different from a very heavy meal, especially if it's right before bed.
When we look at these results again, we don't want to just look at the results.
We don't want to look at the difference in calories.
We want to include every single aspect in here from type of food,
eating to time before bed eating,
to all these other things that contribute to these results.
So what does this all mean? Right?
Let's make sure to look at this from a very holistic standpoint.
So the truth is from the research that I've seen and from my own personal
experience,
I feel a lot different in the morning after I've eaten very late at night as
compared to when I'm fasting or even when I eat meals three,
four hours before bed. Now I noticed that I have a less heavy sleep.
I noticed that I wake up a little more groggy and I can just tell from that
standpoint. Now,
if we were to look at this from let's even just say that the same amount of
calories consumed at 5:00 PM versus 9:00 PM are gonna contribute to the same
amount of sleep quality and the same amount of metabolism and fat loss,
the truth is there's also a lot of research that backs the fact that people who
eat later at night tend to over eat and consume more calories throughout
the day people who don't.
So there's research that was presented at the 2020 European and international
obesity.
Congress have basically show that people who eat less after 6:00 PM tend to
eat fewer calories throughout the day. And along with that,
what my clients have found,
what I've found and I'm sure what a lot of other people have found is that if
they set that hard stop from when they're eating and they refuse to eat certain
foods later at night,
they're much less likely to actually have that hard stop and to follow through.
Whereas if there's no sort of restriction there and the ideas, you know,
it's not going to impact me. If I eat a little bit later,
there tends to be that possibility of overeating.
Especially when we take into consideration things like decision fatigue,
where the more you go throughout your day, the more decisions you make,
the more your brain is actually likely to make decisions that are worse off for
you. So if we were to sum this up big picture eating later at night can
potentially lead to poor sleep,
which can lead to a slow metabolism and less fat burned.
It can also lead to the potential of overeating late at night,
or even just eating more calories throughout the day. Now, with that being said,
does that mean that you should avoid eating late at night at all costs?
The simple answer is no, right.
There are bound to be times where you were pushed to eat those foods.
And the truth is that there's going to be a massive difference if you just go
out and you just eat the foods, cause you know, you're going to, you know,
it's time versus if you approach it from a very stressful angle and you're
little, uh, guilty when you do it. Because again,
those emotions can actually interfere with your metabolism and interfere how
that food is processed and it can actually make it more detrimental for you.
So my best advice, if you are working on weight loss is number one,
try to set a cutoff for when you are going to stop eating at night.
It's just going to do you good. But number two,
when those times come where you are potentially forced to eat late at night,
or maybe you're just exposed to food late at night and you end up eating it,
just do it, just enjoy it. Right? Cause in the longterm,
that's probably going to be less hurtful than if you were to feel super guilty,
super shameful, and super stressed about the situation. So I got to ask you,
I'm curious, leave me a comment below.
Do you usually struggle with cravings at night or do you usually tend to eat
late at night, right before bed? But again,
we're always looking at this from a very holistic angle.
So if you are in a position where you have been working on losing weight and
you're not at the goal that you want to be at and you're struggling and maybe
you've done the yo-yo a couple of times and you're really finding it difficult
to stay consistent,
make sure you go in the description of this video for a free three part course
on how to use something that I call E M S mastery to simplify the process of
weight loss,
to make it much easier to lose weight and to allow you to build the habits and
the internal discipline to stay consistent with that weight loss and to finally
see results. But with that being said, of course, as always,
I appreciate you make sure to subscribe for more awesome videos on how to
simplify the process of health, of course, as always make sure to eat smart,
sleep deep, move more and be grateful for this moment.
I'll see you in the next video.