Late-night snacks are a bad idea
Your metabolism is a tricky, picky thing. It takes very little to set it off balance, and diet changes can have a big effect on it. But one of the worst possible things you can do for your metabolism is to eat the majority of your food at night.
In fact, research has shown that most overweight adults tend to eat more at dinner than normal weight folks, while eating just a few calories more at breakfast and lunch.
Could say a lot about our nation's obesity epidemic, especially since there's just as much research that shows Americans tend to eat the majority of their calories starting at dinnertime and on into the night. To make matters worse, the foods we eat at night tend to be higher in fat and calories than the foods we ate during the daytime.
Nighttime is when our bodies need the fewest calories. So the calories you eat have nowhere else to go other than your hips, thighs, and belly. But big, heavy dinners aren't the only problem.
There's a lot of snacking done between dinnertime and bedtime, when our bodies are the least active of all. Studies have shown that the later you eat, the less satisfying food will be, resulting in even more eating.
There are tons of reasons why we eat more at night. For some people it's cultural-lots of families are accustomed to sitting down to a big dinner, one that often includes dessert. Other people simply under-eat during the day, causing hunger to keep building up. And for still others, it's simply an emotional thing-they eat to calm raging emotions or boredom.
Fortunately, there are a lot of really easy and satisfying ways to decrease these night-eating urges without going hungry.
For instance, there's evidence that the longer the gap between dinner and the previous snack or meal, the more you're likely to eat at dinnertime. In fact, the longer that gap, the more likely that you'll wind up taking in more calories and fat than you would have if you'd had a light snack. So the solution here is easy: Narrow that gap with a small, healthy snack.
Instead of eating a healthy lunch and just expecting that to tide you over until a dinnertime binge, add a healthy snack in there somewhere, like a piece of fruit and a handful of nuts. It may feel like you're adding more food, but over time you'll realize that you're actually eating less.
I also always recommend eating a large breakfast with some protein and fat, not just carbs. That means a bowl of cereal and a banana doesn't cut it. Nor does a donut and cup of coffee. In fact, there's more nutrition in a bowl of dog food than the usual processed breakfast cereal breakfast I see most people down in the morning. Add some nuts and raisins and you're in business. Or how about eggs a few times a week? Or a bowl of cooked grains, like oatmeal, with nuts and raisins and a bit of cinnamon? The best breakfast of all may be leftovers from that complete cooked dinner you fixed the night before. A large breakfast means you'll be less hungry later on in the day. It also revs up your metabolism and makes you burn more calories through the day. So throw away all the highly processed, boxed pseudo-food known as breakfast cereal and have some real food instead.
Another good way to avoid nighttime noshing is to keep your evenings busy and interesting, and that doesn't mean watching your favorite television show. (People tend to eat more when they're sitting in front of the television.)
Try taking a night class, having some light exercise, or taking up a new hobby-after all, it's hard to eat while you're knitting or aerobicizing.
