Eating late at night

[needtoknow121]

I know there is a lot of talk about IF and having an early supper but has anyone lost weight whilst still having their evening meal or daily calories later? I have a healthy meal plan in a calorie deficit and am on a new exercise regime, but it is impossible to have supper before 9pm due to work. Will this prevent weight loss?

As long as you are within your calorie allowance you will still lose weight.

The thing about all the different diet regimes and methods is that they all work, but different things suit different people.

I think it depends what you do afterwards, i.e will you burn it off or are you going to bed with the food in your tummy. If you eat then slump on the sofa for an hour and go to bed it will probably slow things down, if you eat then go out and do 10000 steps to burn it off or an hour on a bike it probably won't have any impact.

You need to wait for the food to be digested before you can use it to fuel exercise, hence all the advice about eating a couple of hours before doing strenuous exercise so that you are properly fuelled up. I doubt you'll be going off for a gym session at midnight OP!

When you go to sleep your digestive system slows down so it doesn't somehow turn into more fat overnight than it would during the day.

Your body will use the more instant energy from recent food and then it will look for energy from stored fat if it needs it. That's how losing weight by being in calorie deficit works. There can be other health benefits to IF, but I believe studies have shown that the main reason it mostly works is because you cut down the time that is available to eat and so eat fewer calories.

There is so much misinformation around it’s not surprising it’s hard.

As long as you eat in a deficit you should be fine, and you can’t stay up late ‘burning it off’ that’s not going to help you get decent sleep. People don’t usually work out after dinner to burn off their meals a lot of people work out in the morning. You will burn some energy just by sleeping, the main amount of energy we burn is through our daily activity of moving around and being alive. So just keep active during the day.

Everyone is different - I go to sleep early around 9.30 so I would struggle to sleep after eating a big meal at 9pm, and lots of good sleep is very important for weight loss and health. But if you sleep a little later maybe just don’t have a really heavy meal in evenings. I would swap my lunch for the main meal then have something lighter at night? You may already do this.