Common Weight Loss Myths: The Midnight Snack

You hear the growl. You toss and turn in your bed counting sheep waiting for sleep to tame your hunger. An hour passes. More sheep leap the fence. The growling continues. Finally, almost as if the fridge calls your name, you stumble with eyes half open to the kitchen, fumbling for the fridge door handle only to be blinded by the heavenly white light that escapes. There on the top shelf is the left over pizza from dinner, and before you can tell yourself no, you've just downed a slice.

It's probably after that second slice that you realize you've broken one of the worst rules any person attempting to lose weight knows: NEVER HAVE A MIDNIGHT SNACK.

Anyone who has tried to shred those pounds absolutely knows that is a shame enducing no-no: you just don't eat past the twilight hours. As one "so called" expert tell us (read tip #6), our body slows down at night, which means any food before we go to sleep will be stored as fat!

Or will it?

For anyone trying to lose weight, believing this myth is a no brainer. Eat an early dinner and leave time for your body to digest the food before you go to sleep, and PRESTO, your on the track to losing weight.

However, many weight loss experts find this logic to be wrong. Judy L. Cameron, PhD, senior scientist at the Oregon National Primate Research Center in Beaverton, used 20 female monkeys in a study to see if eating before sleep increased fat gain (the source for this can be found here).

According to Cameron, there was no difference in weight gain between monkeys that ate during the day and those that ate during the night.

Cameron further adds that "weight gain depends on how many calories we eat, and not when we eat them."

As much as we want it to, our bodies do not have a mind of their own. They cannot tell time and shut down production because we are sleep. In fact, our bodies were made to do four things: breathe, swallow food, digest food into energy, and dispose of the trash that is left. Our body does not have an off time. Whether it be day or night, asleep or awake, it will do its job.

More importantly, the body does not recognize measurements of time. The idea of losing the calories before they are turned into fat is not based on logic. Realistically, the body is constantly converting food into energy. No matter when you work out, you burn energy. Using days and weeks to measure your success at burning that energy (aka weight loss) is a convient man-made tool.

...that you can go ahead and start stuffing your face at night now. While eating late at night will not make you gain weight anymore than eating during the day, this is in no way a recommendation to increase your eating in general.

Ultimately, weight loss is burning more calories than you eat. It's that simple. Whether you eat at 12:01 PM or 12:01 AM makes no difference, UNLESS those calories you are eating at that time is more than the calories you've burned.

My recommendation for a midnight snack: the ever trusty apple. As always, eat healthy and live actively.