Do Carbs At Night Prevent Fat Loss?

Much like dark alleyways, shortcuts through the woods and creepy looking guys lingering on street corners, carbs are something most people tend to avoid at night.

The premise is that eating too many carbs late in the day prevents fat loss, and may even cause weight gain.

There are a number of reasons why this nutritional theory exists, the main one being carbs’ association with insulin. Insulin is the hormone in the body that is responsible for shuttling nutrients through your bloodstream. Whenever you eat a meal, insulin is released by the pancreas, and it goes round, picking up all the nutrients you’ve just eaten, and taking them to the right places. The main role of insulin is to pick up carbohydrate, take it to the liver or muscle cells, where carbs are then converted to glycogen (the stored form of carbohydrate) to use for energy when it’s needed later on.

Sounds good so far, but there’s a curve ball coming up.

Too much insulin in the bloodstream has been associated with an increased risk of developing risky health issues such as diabetes, heart disease, and, possibly worst of all – obesity and weight gain. Elevated insulin in the blood, combined with high levels of blood sugar means that your body has a ready supply of easily accessible carbohydrate, and therefore won’t ever tap into your fat stores when it needs energy.

End result – you feel lethargic, and burn little, if any body fat. Indeed, you may steadily keep gaining weight, wondering what you are doing wrong as you slide higher and higher up the BMI scale.

So in small to moderate amounts, insulin is most definitely needed, but in large amounts this hormone can be hugely detrimental.

Insulin is released in bigger quantities when you eat carbs, hence the first reason why avoiding carbs at night has become such a common dietary practice – high insulin before bed equals fat storage overnight.

Secondly, and perhaps even more critical is that unless you’re an extreme sleepwalker, you don’t burn (hardly) any calories at night. There are minor processes that go on in the body at rest, such as breathing, organ function, digestion and metabolic turnover, but the average adult only burns around 60 calories an hour while sleeping – far fewer than you’d burn while exercising, or even working at your desk or standing in the kitchen. That's right; you burn fewer calories sleeping than you do sitting on the couch while awake.

This is where the idea comes from that calories eaten before bed are more likely to be stored as fat.

If you eat a large carb-filled meal, your body won’t have enough time before sleep to burn them off and they’ll therefore be stored as body fat.

So, by the sounds of it, carbs at night should be avoided like the bogeyman.

Not so fast though, because not only could these theories be false, there could actually be benefit to eating carbs late in the day.

Why You Should Eat More Carbs At Night

The first scenario where carbs at night can be beneficial is when you’re training.

There are two main schools of thought when it comes to carbs around exercise.

One theory is that you should load up on carbs before a workout session (as marathon runners and endurance athletes do) to give you energy and optimize your athletic performance.

The other theory is that carbs are better saved for after your session, to raise insulin levels back to normal, replete your energy stores and kick-start the recovery and growth process which will help you build muscle and prevent you from feeling sore after your workout.

A third thought is that actually, both pre and post workout carbs are important.

Whatever idea you subscribe too, we can all agree on one thing:

This means that if you’re training after work, you really should have the majority of your carbohydrates in the evening to fuel your workout session and aid quick muscle recovery.

Secondly, Western diets encourage eating carbs at night.

What does the typical family have for dinner? It’s usually dishes such as spaghetti, meat with potatoes, chili with rice, or a bread/starch based meal. To fit in with the “norm” and so that you can eat with your family, eating carbs at night is a far more sociable option.

Carbs also aid sleep. Have you ever eaten a big carb-based meal and felt absolutely exhausted afterwards? That’s the carbs going to work, so it makes sense to eat a meal that makes you feel tired right before you hit the hay, rather than earlier on when you have things to do. It wouldn’t go down too well with your boss if you ate all your carbs at lunch then fell asleep in the afternoon!

The optimal carbohydrate intake varies from person to person, but it’s likely that to lose fat, you will need to lower your carb intake (and obviously calories) to accelerate fat loss. The science behind your body simply “shutting off” and going into storage mode just simply doesn’t hold water. You do burn fewer calories during sleep, but your body doesn’t have an on/off switch – it’s a 24-hour machine, so carbs eaten late at night can be used for energy later.

The other number that matters is calorie intake. In theory, provided you’re in a calorie deficit – eating fewer than you burn, you won’t put on weight, no matter when you eat your carbs or calories.

Finally, you have the issue of carb cut-off times: When exactly do you stop eating carbs?

It seems that the magic number for most people is 6 pm. But where does this number come from? And what happens if you eat carbs at 6:05 pm – will they immediately be stored as fat?

The answers to the above are –
- Thin air
- No

So, while the reasoning behind cutting carbs at night make sense initially, there’s very little in the way of science or even logic to support it, and it just over complicates things.

The main thing to get right is your carbohydrate intake throughout the day. This does take some tweaking, but for most people a good starting base is 100 grams per day for women and 150 grams per day for men.

Structure the majority of your carbs around your workouts – if you train in the morning, eat lots of carbs at breakfast, a moderate amount at lunch and few at dinner. If you train in the evening, stick to protein/fat/vegetable meals through the morning and afternoon, then load up on carbs at night.

Don’t be scared of eating your carbs at night – your evening bowl of oats or that sweet potato you accompany your steak with certainly isn’t going to kill your progress. In fact, it could even accelerate your fat loss, help you sleep and make you enjoy your diet more, knowing you don’t have to worry about carb cut-off times.