All people who at least somehow monitor their diet know this feeling. It’s 22:00, your stomach is growling, and in the refrigerator open sprats are obsequiously waiting for you and invitingly splashing with oily tails. The choice is obvious: either a sandwich, or willpower into a fist and nothing.
The editors of City Portals and our colleagues from Parents.ru know that there is another option: prepare food in advance that you can eat for a late dinner and even at night, without gaining weight. And in a sense, even lose weight – after all, we all know that it’s not always possible to restrain yourself from eating an unexpected herring under a fur coat for dinner.
What magical time is 18:00?
The myth that eating after six in the evening is harmful appeared around the late 90s – early 2000s, when the model of intermittent fasting became popular. Then morning exercises began to be shown on TV less and less often, housewives drank a lot of Flying Swallow, Herbalife became boring, and some kind of replacement was needed for the lazy and supposedly effective way to lose weight. And then – lo and behold! – an elementary solution to all your troubles: just don’t eat after 18:00. The most common option was a 12-hour fasting window.
If a person eats his last meal at 6 p.m. But experts say the model is questionable for practical use. We all have a fasting window (we don’t eat while we sleep), but everyone has their own food protocol. For example, someone does not have breakfast and eats between 12:00 and 22:00, this is 10 hours of eating and 14 hours of fasting.
Then the industry slightly distorted this approach and the erroneous opinion appeared that 18:00 is some kind of magical time when the body quickly adjusts to a certain secretion of hormones. This is partly true, but only the process of “tuning” occurs much later than at the designated time – closer to sleep.
Experts recommend having dinner at least three hours before bedtime. At the same time, you should try to compose your menu in such a way that dinner does not overload the gastrointestinal tract and at the same time is not too light so that after an hour you do not want to eat again. In the first case, you are unlikely to be able to fall asleep normally, in the second, the night watch will begin. And the result is the same.
Direct harm is excess weight. At night, the body was engaged in digestion, as a result, not very high-quality sleep, a little weak in the morning, impaired digestion, in the morning you don’t want to have breakfast, says nutritionist Galina Bartashevich. — The night watch begins when a person has already used up energy, but has not replaced it with food equivalent in time; as a result, the body demands from the owner to return what was spent. It is easier for a person to quickly satisfy his hunger without thinking about his waist. This is where cakes go, as well as late-night eating of fruit, chocolate, a cup of coffee and everything else.
You can eat anything at any time of the day
Nutritionist Olesya Lymar believes that you can eat at any time of the day, and even at night, the main thing is to be aware of this. The basic rule for eating in the evening and at night is to meet your daily calorie requirement, it can be easily determined using a formula, just enter the query into a search engine and calculate.
Knowing the daily value of calories, you will build a diet for the day. Remember that there must be a balance of BJU (average formula for the ratio of proteins, fats, carbohydrates: proteins – 15–20%, fats – 30%, carbohydrates – 55–60%. – Ed.). If by the evening you have a supply of carbohydrates left, there will be no harm from chocolate. If you need to lose weight.
reduce the number of calories, if you want to keep your body in shape and not gain weight, don’t go beyond the limits, says the specialist and adds that the times of strict diets and eating by the hour and grams are long gone, and diets based on blood type or according to genetic indicators, according to Olesya, nothing more than pumping out money.
Your diet can include absolutely any food: buckwheat, chicken, oatmeal, cottage cheese, pasta, bread, milk chocolate with filling, a sandwich or a burger – all this can be included in your daily intake and eaten at any time of the day.
– If you are comfortable eating large portions twice a day – please (intermittent fasting is fashionable today), if it is easier for your body to receive food 5-7 times a day in small portions, then stick to this nutrition system, there are no strict rules, everything is individual. Research shows that in both cases the weight loss will be the same, explains the nutritionist.
Rules for eating at night
– The feeling of hunger wakes up at night due to the fact that at home we feel a slowdown – things are done, the work is over, the bustle fades into the background, you want to rest and relax. We get bored, we start thinking about what to do with ourselves, but at home there is a refrigerator and food – everything is simple. It is important to understand the difference between hunger and appetite – if your stomach is growling, eat, don’t starve yourself, says Olesya Lymar.
The nutritionist recommends without fanaticism following the rule “you can eat anything at any time of the day” and reminds you that eating a burger for breakfast, lunch and dinner is a bad idea. Perhaps you will meet the number of calories per day, but the stomach will feel bad from such a meal – we need useful substances, vitamins and minerals, the diet should be varied – this way we will receive all the necessary nutrients. For example, you should eat fish 2-3 times a week.
