Will Eating Late At Night Actually Make You Gain Weight?

Eating late at night has been said, over and over, to be a good cause of weight gain. How true?

Unlike the case of weight gain, weight loss can be pretty difficult and stressful, for no other reason than, a good number of rules like you’re not permitted to eat late at night either are you permitted to eat certain meals and the likes, that accompanies the process.

For me, the more the rules and restriction, the harder it gets. And the harder it is, the more difficult and frustrating it is to achieve. I’m sure a good number of you are with me on this, right?

Anyway, back to the topic, eating late makes you fatter. Truth or myth?

First of all, let me explain a few things about weight loss and weight gain after which you’d be in a better position to answer the question.

The human body is wired in a way that it needs a certain amount of calories to function on a daily basis. For instance, say you need 1,800 calories daily for a proper functioning of your body. Consistently consuming anything less than 1,800 daily will lead to weight loss. Likewise, consuming anything more than 1,800 will lead to weight gain.

ALSO READ: 7 Reasons You Are Not Losing Weight

Now that we’ve established that point, I’m sure you’ll understand better when I say, “Eating late at night doesn’t make you fatter, but eating too much late at night can make you fatter.”

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Weight Control Information Network website, “it does not matter what time of day you eat. It is what and how much you eat and how much physical activity you do during the whole day that determines whether you gain, lose, or maintain your weight.”

While eating late at night (if you’re hungry and you feel the need to) might not be a bad idea as it might not affect your weight in any way, tendencies that we might end up overeating at night is higher than it is in the daytime because we’re probably bored or we’re simply craving something and since we’ve got nothing to do, we just end up mindlessly storing up so much into our mouth (binge eating).

According to Lori Zanini, a California-based registered dietitian and certified diabetes educator with HealthCare Partners medical group, binge eating on high-sugar, high-fat foods causes you to go to bed with elevated blood sugar levels.

Elevated sugar, at whichever time of day, sets the body up for subsequent sugar crashes and weight gain, with the body quickly storing excess sugar as fat. However, since your body uses less sugar as fuel when you’re lying in bed as opposed to running around, potentially more sugar winds up in your fat cells when you eat those foods late at night.

So, your body’s ability to gain weight is mainly about what you eat and how much you eat, not about when you eat.

However, while the time of the day you choose to eat might not be a determining factor to your weight gain or loss, eating dinner much early is advisable because going to bed with a full stomach can interfere with your sleep, leaving you restless and exhausted in the morning. When this happens, you might probably end up making a bad breakfast decision.

At the end, it’s basically about eating well and eating right.

However, if you need help planning and organizing your meal options for your weight loss or weight gain plans, download MyPerfectWeight, an app created to help Nigerians resolve their weight issues by providing daily meal suggestion that can help you either lose weight or gain weight.

Download MyPerfectWeight app here.