Achieving Weight Loss Success With Late Night Snacking

Many of us believe that in order to lose weight, we have to cut out all of the late night snacks.  This is true, to a point.  But eating food after a certain time of night doesn't automatically cause weight gain.  In fact, there are some reasons why adding a late night snack to your diet may be beneficial to your overall weight loss plan.  Let's explore the world of weight loss and the midnight munchies.

Calorie Consumption Truth

When we think about late night snacking, we have to understand a simple truth.  Whether you follow a diet where you actually count the calories you eat all day, or you just try to eat foods with fewer calories, the fact is you have to 'count calories.'   The idea is quite simple.  If we need 2,000 calories per day, and we consume most of those calories during the day, we have very little room to add calories at night.  If we consume fewer of those calories during the day, we will have room in our calorie count to eat a snack at night.  Yes, you can ingest your calories any time you like - morning, noon, or night - and it won't make a difference in your weight loss program.  But, as you'll see, there is something to be said for spreading those calories out over the day, and night.

The Need to Snack

The first thing you need to do is decide what sort of late-night snacker you are.  Do you eat because you're hungry?  Do you eat because you're bored?  Do you eat sweet foods?  Do you eat salty foods?  Narrowing down some of the whys-and-whats will make a difference when you are trying to figure out how to lose weight and enjoy your bedtime snacks.  Once you know why you snack at night, you can adjust your snacking to help you stay on track with your diet, or even improve it.  Satisfy your need to snack by planning for healthier choices that fit your taste buds and your diet.  This way you won't keep searching for the solution to your hunger and end up devouring more calories than you needed to.

Stop the Starvation Trigger

The surprising news is, some late night snacking can actually help you lose weight.  If you sit down for dinner at 6 o'clock at night, for instance, and you turn in at 11 o'clock, you have a long stretch where your body is getting the signal that it's not going to get any more food.  Many experts believe that a light snack about an hour before bed signals your body that it's okay to continue to burn calories because there's no danger of starvation.  The key is to make sure the calories you eat for your late night snack are still within your range of total calories recommended for the day, and not beyond.

Smooth Out the Blood Sugar

Every time we eat, our blood sugar rises, then falls.  As this occurs, a healthy body adjusts and uses the nutrients for energy, etc.  The goal is to keep the peaks and valleys smoothed out by eating many smaller healthy meals throughout the day.  If you're eating three meals a day, with no snacks in between, your blood sugar levels are bouncing high and crashing hard.  Sharply spiking and quickly falling blood sugar levels will cause the dieter to grab for the chocolate cake or cookies, which continues the cycle.

Your midnight snack can actually work for you rather than against you in your weight loss plan.  Consider the late-night snack your 'sixth meal' of the day to help turn off the starvation trigger and smooth out your blood sugar.  This can be a valuable tool if you plan nutritious snacks that fit within your total caloric intake.  Remember, your body only needs a certain amount of calories to function.  What time of day you consume those calories doesn't matter much in the overall weight loss scheme.  Preparing for the inevitable midnight munchies attack is definitely part of a smart weight loss program.

5 Important Foods For Weight Loss

When you think of losing weight, your first thought is probably about the foods you will have to eliminate from your diet.  But, how often do you think about the foods you need to add?  Probably not very often. While some diet and weight loss programs talk about eating less, others emphasize adding foods to your diet.  Not just any foods, however.  There are several foods considered to have some real benefits for anyone trying to lose weight. Here are a few foods that are right at the top of the list.

Oatmeal

Oatmeal  (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Oatmeal and oat bran are loaded with fiber and when eaten can expand to almost 30 times their volume. The combination of these two effects decreases your appetite by making you feel fuller longer.  You can go for long periods of time without eating while keeping your energy levels high at the same time. In order to increase the effectiveness of your weight loss program, eat oatmeal about two hours before doing your workout. Steel-cut oats, rolled oats, and plain or natural oatmeal are your best options. Avoid the instant flavored oatmeal in packets as they contain lots of sugar and other additives, and they are much more processed, meaning the fiber content is decreased.

Raw Fruits and Vegetables

Your body burns, on average, 15% more calories when your meals contain mostly raw fruits and veggies than if you ate a meal with no fruits or vegetables.  It just makes sense, then, in order to lose weight you want to eat meals consisting of mostly raw ingredients. Since these ingredients still have all of their nutrients, your body gets what it needs while you feel satisfied.  Also, fruits and vegetables that are high in vitamin C, like lemons, oranges, and pineapple help your body to mobilize and flush out extra body fat.

Spices

For years, people have claimed that adding spices to your diet can help with weight loss. Recently, a professor at Oxford University, found that by eating just 3 grams of chili peppers in a meal can increase your fat-burning metabolism by 8% to 20%, for up to three hours after eating the peppers. Also, the addition of spicy mustard to your sandwich may burn an extra 45 to 75 calories over the same three hour time span. And, just by adding fresh ginger to your diet, you get a strong diuretic. Fresh ginger also increases growth hormone production, therefore increasing the amount of fat released from your body's fat stores for burning as fuel.

 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Apples

While eating raw fruits in general is typically considered a great way to lose weight, apples are especially important to single out. Apples contain pectin, which prevents your body from over-absorbing fat, as well as causing your body to release some of the stored fat. A study done in Brazil found that people who ate an apple before each meal lost 33% more weight than a group of people who didn't eat an apple. Pectin also acts as an appetite suppressant, so they are great snacks to tide you over between meals.

Fish

Not only are most fish loaded with tons of omega-3s, but fish like tuna, sardines, and salmon trigger the hormone leptin. Leptin is a fat-burning hormone that suppresses your appetite and determines whether you store the calories you eat as fat, or if you burn those calories for energy. The origin of the word is interesting, too.  Leptin originated from the Greek word “leptos” which means “slender.”  So, adding more leptin to your diet may just prove to be slenderizing for you.

Eating certain foods to lose weight is not a brand new theory.  We've often heard about diet fads that include one or two foods that dominate the program.  The idea of eating specific foods that have been scientifically studied is a much more recent development in the weight loss world.  When you look at the reasons why certain foods actually help you burn fat and calories, it just makes sense to add those foods to your diet plan.