It's best to stop eating about three hours before going to bed. That allows plenty of time for your body to digest the last food you ate so it won't disrupt your sleep, but leaves a small enough window before sleep that you won't go to bed feeling hungry.
If you want to maintain or lose weight, then you shouldn't eat after 7 p.m. There are myriad reasons why people might not want to eat after a certain time in the evening, especially if it's close to when they go to sleep, says Cara Harbstreet, M.S., R.D., L.D., owner of Street Smart Nutrition..
Overeating before the bedtime increases the risk of indigestion and heartburn, resulting in restlessness and sleeplessness. Eating late also sends a message to the brain to keep active that further prevents the body from powering down.
Myth: You Shouldn't Eat After 7 P.M.
“However, there's no magic to the 7 p.m. time,” Dobbins says. “Losing weight is a matter of limiting our calorie intake, and most people tend to eat most of their calories in the evening, at dinner and snacking afterward.
It's common to hear the phrase “don't eat after 8 p.m.” when you're trying to lose weight. But when you think about it in terms of calories, the math doesn't work out. As long as you stick to your goal and eat fewer calories than you burn, you should lose weight.
Aside from causing belly fat, eating late and reclining on a full stomach increases your risk of developing acid reflux and indigestion, since gravity is no longer able to pull everything in your tummy straight down.
Having a decent overnight fast may be a great place to start to give your gut bacteria a helping hand. Having a 10-12-hour overnight period, say 7pm-7am where no food is consumed, is a very traditional way of eating.
The study also suggests that skipping breakfast or dinner might help people lose weight, since they burned more calories on those days.
One of the most common, easy-to-follow schedules is 16:8. This means you fast for a 16-hour period of time and eat your daily meals during an 8-hour period of time. For example, you may want to fast from 7 p.m. until 11 a.m. the next day.
Plan to eat breakfast within an hour of waking. This way, your breakfast doesn't blend into a mid-morning snack or grazing followed closely by lunch. Lunch should be about four to five hours after breakfast. For example, if you ate breakfast at 7 am, eat lunch between 11 am and noon.
So when exactly should you stop eating at night? Scientists can't agree on a single set time, but the consensus seems to be within three hours before bedtime. So if you go to bed at 11 p.m., don't eat after 8 p.m.
“The studies suggest that eating out of our normal rhythm, like late at night, may prompt weight gain” and higher levels of blood sugar, which can raise the risk of chronic disease, Allison says.
Even if you can't eat an early dinner, you should try to make breakfast and lunch your biggest meals of the day and dinner your smallest. If you're used to eating a small lunch and a big dinner, then switch the order. You can make your dinner a meal that's heavy on vegetables to lighten it up.
Skipping dinner, the researchers found, was "significantly associated" with weight gain of 10% or more, and having a BMI over 25, which is classed as overweight or obese.
Skipping Breakfast
People tend to find it easiest because generally, it's the meal commonly taken at a time of hurry, as you rush out the door in the morning. This is coupled with the fact that, of the three meals of the day, breakfast tends to be the smallest.
Does sleeping count as fasting? A. Yes, while following intermittent fasting, sleeping is considered a fasting period. Therefore, one does not consume food or drinks during this state.
20:4 fasting involves fasting for 20 hours per day and eating during a four-hour window. It is a type of intermittent fasting that is categorized as time-restricted eating (TRE), where the focus is on when you can and cannot eat rather than what you can and cannot eat.
Your Slow Metabolism:
When you have a slow metabolism, your body doesn't convert food into energy in sufficient quantities. So most of the food you eat is stored in the form of fats. This is the main reason why some people get fat even though they don't eat much.