Will You Gain Weight By Eating At Night?

"Eating at night makes me gain weight". Here’s a comment I hear almost daily. Is this true? Will eating late make you gain weight? No it won’t…kind of.

Honestly it depends. Eating before bedtime is actually NOT a bad thing. By eating late the body’s metabolism will be running faster, thus burning more calories. If you eat small portions every three hours, from the moment you wake until the moment you go to sleep, the metabolism stays at a higher rate. This is what we want to maintain a lower, healthy body weight, AND to lose weight.

However, if you eat high sugar, high fatty foods late at night, that’s not what the body needs. Then the answer is yes, you will gain weight. But honestly, that goes for anytime of the day. If you eat high sugar, high fatty foods at 6am, or 12noon, you WILL gain weight. If you eat high sugar, high fatty foods at 3pm, 6pm, or 10pm, you WILL also gain weight. It doesn’t matter what time it is. It just matters what is put into your body.

My wife and I, and our kids almost always eat something within 30 minutes of going to sleep. I honestly cannot remember a time when I didn’t do that. I know many people say to that “well you can afford to do that because you are skinny”. Wrong! We do that to become skinny and to stay skinny. It flat out increases the metabolism. We also eat first thing in the morning, every morning, no matter what.

The foods you want to eat before bedtime are low sugar, low fatty foods. Foods that are high in fiber are great before bed. “But that’s a carb”… I know that’s what you’re saying. No, it’s a GOOD carb, a complex carb. The human body needs complex carbs in order to live. If you eat bad food before bedtime, you WILL no doubt gain weight, so I do not recommend that. However if you eat smart, clean, healthy foods, for the most part every three hours, you’ll be lean and mean in no time.


Chad Cannon is the owner of the Shaping Concepts Fitness Training Center in Bluffton, SC. Make sure to try his 21 Day Trial!