Why do we gain weight when eating late?

(Mike) #1

I would love to see the science behind why we gain weight (when eating Keto) when we eat late at night. I know I gain if I do this and I usually lose if I don’t … but I would love to see this in medical research.

Thanks!!!
Mike

(Bob M) #2

I believe the theory is that eating late at night causes higher morning insulin levels.

Having said that, I often eat later at night, and still continue to lose weight. Maybe I’d be thinner if I shifted my eating? Without two of me, I can’t tell.

(Wendy) #3

I’ve heard this and it is probably true for some or even most. It has not affected me. I do know a lot of stress eating or even social eating happens at night.

(Jack Bennett) #4

I think the work of Sachitananda Panda is relevant to this question. Check him out on PubMed and/or in interviews.

See, e.g. https://www.foundmyfitness.com/episodes/satchin-round-2

(Bunny) #5

The short answer:

Intramyocellular fatty (lipids) and intrahepatic fatty deposits (lipids) deposits inside the gluteus maximus and other surrounding skeletal muscle tissue in that area and biceps and other skeletal muscles.

The more lean your skeletal muscle tissue is the faster you oxidize carbohydrates with the mitochondria inside the fat cells (adipocytes) when released (amino-isometric-butyric acid) by lean healthy skeletal muscle tissue after ingested.

You eat too much fat on a ketogenic diet or a SAD diet with high carbohydrates (over 500 grams) especially refined carbohydrates and the first place intrahepatic and intramyocellular fatty deposits accumulate is inside the gluteus maximus then the liver and you will never be good at losing weight and/or keeping it off.

The gluteus maximus controls the metabolism of your entire body BMR/RMR/EER and decides whether or not your individual metabolism will store or oxidize fat, carbohydrates and prevent insulin from storing glucose as lipid droplets . You go on a ketogenic diet to oxidize what’s on board but if you don’t increase your carbohydrate intake exponentially, you will become a human storage facility always trying to remove the lipid droplets out of the adipocytes rather than preventing the storage from taking place to begin with?

There, now your more educated about diabetes and obesity then most people on planet earth!

An adventure beyond visceral fat!

References:

[1] Skeletal intramyocellular lipid metabolism and insulin resistance

[2] Intrahepatic and intramyocellular lipids are determinants of insulin resistance in prepubertal children

(Windmill Tilter) #6

Dr. Fung had an article about this on his blog. I don’t recall the reasoning. If I recall, he said that contrary to his previous advice, if you’re doing 16:8 intermittent fasting for weight loss, it might be better to skip dinner rather than breakfast.

(Robert C) #7

This might be just about TRF window total time.

A 6-hour feeding window of noon to 6 would work but, a 6-hour feeding window that includes midnight would have to start at 6 PM.

So, if you are eating lunch and stopping at 6 (i.e. no late night eating) noticing a weight loss vs. eating lunch and into the late night and noticing weight gain - it would make total sense to have weight gain with the much bigger feeding window.

(Peter) #8

Jason has always said that he thinks eTRF is better, but he doesn’t do it because he wants to have dinner with his family, IIRC.

(Kristen Ann) #9

This made me laugh. I have this problem a lot lol.

(Robert C) #10

In fact, that is in line with Dr. Fung’s primary fasting timing advice - which is to make it fit your lifestyle.

If insulin and cortisol levels in the morning make it technically a slightly better time to fast than the evening but, you will be sitting with an empty plate for dinner with your family and spending extra time making and cleaning up a large morning meal for one - you probably won’t want to continue fasting for very long.

It is a tradeoff - if you have real health issues that you must deal with quickly to save you from quickly worsening organ damage - maybe the technically slightly better time is the best time.

#11

Your body isn’t a clock. It doesn’t know you are eating ‘at night’

It is what you eat daily on whether true long term gains are happening.

The only way you gain if you have been losing and doing well and eating clean…you eat later at night and the morning scale will most probably show a gain. Your body doesn’t want to process digestion and be in repair body sleep mode at the same time. The gain is just then, it won’t effect your overall losing amt. in the end of it all.

Is this what you mean? a show of a morning ‘gain’ from eating late the night before on the scale?

Weight loss isn’t linear and can’t be controlled on demand. Well, some can starve and do other things to make that happen LOL but eating well and clean is the key to weight loss mostly and time of day will not matter in the long term of it. Morning scale, yea gonna show, long term it won’t effect your losses if one holds plan etc.

(Bob M) #12

This is why I eat at night. With two kids doing “stuff”, we often are not home until after 7pm. That’s when I eat.

This is also why OMAD does not work very often for me. I can eat OMAD if I can get home and eat before (finish by) say 6:30pm. If I’m not starting eating until 7:30+ pm, and I go to bed at 9 pm, that’s a massive amount of calories too close to bed.

(Raj Seth) #13

Actually, the body does have a clock, and its the circadian rhythm. For example, if the body didn’t know the time of day, how would it know when to trigger the dawn effect.

While I don’t recall who explained this, but seems like the Insulin impact of a late meal stays with metabolic syndrome peeps longer - more insulin more longer more fat storage less fat burn.

#14

Agreed. Circadian rhythms are physical, mental, and behavioral changes that follow a daily cycle. They respond primarily to light and darkness in an organism’s environment. Sleeping at night and being awake during the day is an example of a light-related circadian rhythm .

For me it has nothing to do truly with how your body will actually ‘drop long term’ weight as addressed by your eating. What time of day you eat your body truly does not know. Your body can’t say it is midnight. Now your body knows it wants a ‘sleep cycle from your circadian internal clock’ to happen kinda….but it doesn’t know that you ate food at midnight and will cause any long term weight gain.

that is kinda what I meant.

but I agree, there is a clock that gives that rythyms to our physical lives.

does it make sense what I am trying to get across LOL I think I kinda put it how I mean it :slight_smile:

Still wondering if the OP is meaning long term gains or that ‘morning scale’ weigh in stinks?

(Raj Seth) #15

While it can’t say it is midnight - IIRC “I forgot who” said that the insulin impact of a late meal is longer lasting - and going by the insulin AUC (area under the curve), more insulin => less fat loss.

#16

Growth hormone? It is secreted at night.

#17

less. OP is saying gains here.

Now I get all that sciency stuff on insulin LOL

but thing is if one states DP…The dawn phenomenon, sometimes called the dawn effect, is an early-morning increase in blood sugar which occurs to some extent in all humans, more relevant to people with diabetes. It is different from chronic Somogyi rebound in that dawn phenomenon is not associated with nocturnal hypoglycemia. It is thought to occur due to temporal elevation in serum cortisol, epinephrine and norepinephrine associated with transition from sleeping to wakefulness.

—every single human mostly and with diab. patients more to be effected etc…how can a common thing truly matter long term?
It won’t. We all experience this phase and factor of possible insulin raised in the morning and should be thru a later meal happening…how does that effect long term loss? and we aren’t talking losses here, we are talking gains.

Others on the thread said they aren’t effected at all?

As me. I can eat late at night and show a gain on the scale in the morning easily…but a few days later I can drop lbs. on that same scale to a new low.

We drop 1/2 lb. We drop 1 lb. We can not drop anything for 2 weeks with gains and drops and then we ‘whoosh’ off 3.2 lbs after that to a new low on that nasty scale.

I mean why would one gain (as in true gain all the time and not stop gaining) when eating late at night…………….ahhh ha…only if they are not eating clean.

Overall gain from time of day doesn’t matter truly on LONG TERM losses. Those losses are gonna come. On their timeline.

Not the scale after each meal at any given time of day.

I hope again I am trying to say a certain point here and hoping I am getting it out there like I am thinking it :slight_smile:

If eating late at night was some ‘true physical real issue’ then not one person ever eating at night would lose a lb. ever thru their efforts.

Still wanting to know the context the OP is meaning on that ‘gain’ tho. Would mean a lot to help put the thread in order a bit with that meaning.

(Bethany) #18

If you search “circadian rhythm insulin resistance” in google scholar, it’ll come up with a lot of scientific evidence that insulin resistance changes based on our circadian rhythms - with relatively higher resistance at night. Research into shift workers and metabolic syndrome also gives a lot of evidence for this.

Personally, I think it just points to the importance of having less insulin-inducing food at night, not necessarily less/no food overall. Even ‘keto’ foods can cause an insulin response though. For someone on keto, this could be used as a tool if they find they are extremely insulin resistant to start and/or are having troubles getting their insulin down.

#19

agreed, no doubt to that fact for me.

but what is the effect of ‘all gain’ and no ‘loss’ over long term?

In that if we all get insulin response from eating later at night and see gains on the morning scale (IF THIS is what the OP is saying) then why are some losing easily with eating later and other’s are not as some stated? Just their level of personal med/health issues? No clear conclusions can be truly drawn at this point .I don’t think that at all in that big info is missing from the original post.

Thing is if we blanket this statement then not one person ever eating at night will lose a lb. ever. Thing is people do. And while I get it might be ‘way slower’ in that immediate effect of next morning scale number, it should never effect long term loss as one gets when they hold plan tight.

Weight loss will not appear as we think ‘it should’ according to us on any scale at any time LOL, but we sure wish it would :slight_smile:

again…and can’t say enough…if the OP would easily expand on the ‘gain’ at ‘night’ issue and what they are truly implying we would easily all come to different conclusions very fast and not guess so much on a lower worded guessing original post. Yea I jumped to conclusions also LOL but I think in the end that is needed. OP to expand on it.

My posts are not meant as drag it out, fight it out by any means LOL

I have some real info I would love to hear from the original poster if and when they hit back on. There are so many shades of gray what goes down on a post. I know. I’ve done it. Meant one thing but in my time to make a short fun post made it come out ‘more than it seems’ :slight_smile: and others can easily go in a diff. direction from anything I ever meant real fast. Just saying on it, just an expression of how I see it all.

(Jane Srygley) #20

I disagree with that. Melatonin is produced to help us sleep. My understanding is that humans are on a day/night cycle. I’ve also read somewhere that insulin production goes up later in the day, so if you’re going to do carbs, it’s better to eat them earlier in the day and really minimize eating late in the day.