It’s 2019 and I still see lots of bad nutrition advice being thrown around. With access to the internet, we are capable of doing our own research and figuring out what is a myth and what isn’t. But this doesn’t stop people from spreading wrong information; either intentionally or unintentionally. Here is something I came across a few weeks ago, and I feel a lot of you can learn something from it. I overheard someone being given the following advice for fat loss;

Ok, so I may or may not remember the exact time that was mentioned but you get the context. I don’t know where to start. First and foremost, you will NOT gain fat if you eat at night. A 100 calorie apple is still a 100 calorie apple, irrespective of the time you eat it. Telling someone who’s new to fitness that they can’t eat after a certain time is the worst thing you can do. In this scenario, if this person actually feels hungry at night, the fruit will be the last thing he considers, when it could be the best option for his health and diet. This brings up the question, why did this myth come up in the first place.

What brought about this theory is the fact that weight gain and eating at night have found to be positively correlated. But as we all know, correlation doesn’t mean causation. Simply put, eating chocolate could be correlated to it being a rainy day, but it’s not the chocolate that’s causing the rain, duh. This is just an example but you get the point. With enhancements in research methods and techniques, we get to dive further into this topic. This helps us answer why there is a positive correlation between the two variables.

One conclusion we reach is simply the fact that you consume more calories when you’re awake. For example, if you were to stay up for 4 more hours than you usually do, there is a higher chance of you feeling hungry during that period, which will lead you to consume more calories, leading to potential weight gain.

The second conclusion is that we generally tend to make poor food choices when we’re awake at night. It makes complete sense. People slack off from preparing their food and eating healthy during the whole day, so I doubt they would be willing to prep something that aligns with their goals if they have cravings at night.

Thus, we see that it is the consumption of extra calories that’s leading to the weight gain, and not the timing of the consumption on itself. In fact, this can be proved by looking at the effectiveness of protocols like Intermittent Fasting and One Meal A Day where a major portion (or all) of your daily calories are consumed at a later part of the day and no hindrance is caused to your fat loss.

Knowing this, I used it to my advantage. I consumed dessert every night while dieting down. As predicted, I lost weight at the same rate I would otherwise since I had my overall calories in check. This could be chocolate, or it could be ice-cream. It depended on my cravings. In fact, knowing I had no restrictions played a huge role in reducing my cravings while in a cutting phase. The more you tell yourself you cannot have something, the more you crave it. Since I knew I could eat the things I crave, it ,in turn, reduced my cravings.

Moreover, we see that consuming food, specifically carbs, before bed can help you fall asleep. Also, this dessert I had was usually was between 200-250 calories. If you see the big picture, it just makes around 10% of my diet. Which means I’m eating healthy whole foods 90% of the time. And that is exactly what balance is about. As much as you cannot sustain being on the extreme of 100% clean eating in the long term, you shouldn’t even think of trying to diet down eating mostly junk food using Flexible Dieting as an excuse.

Once you understand what’s mentioned in the article above, you can start playing around with meal timing. Maybe you’ll find out that you prefer eating more at night and lesser during the day while dieting down. Maybe you just prefer having something before bed. It all depends on you. Once you are aware of what fitness claim is true and what isn’t, you can make better decisions which will lead to an easier execution of your dieting phase. Not only that, it will enhance your ability to maintain the results you achieve and help you stay in great shape for the rest of your life with very little effort.

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