Is one diet as good as another?
esciencenews.com
esciencenews.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutrient_timing
links muscular development with how the timing of eating is correlated with the timing of exercise, so I can see how a similar principle could easily apply to wait loss.
Unless you somehow burned through all your carb stores before bed you're not going to be burning much fat while you sleep. Plus sleeping itself burns very few calories so don't expect to be melting away pounds by sleeping.
and besides, who cares if you're hungry when you go to bed, you're asleep!
I think you hit on the biggest reason why this so-called diet works. People don't notice their hunger when they're asleep and thus less likely to cheat.
Unless you somehow burned through all your carb stores before bed you're not going to be burning much fat while you sleep. > Explain ketone levels increase in the morning regardless of nightly meal composition
Plus sleeping itself burns very few calories so don't expect to be melting away pounds by sleeping. > Exercise causing EPOC can be used in conjunction to reduce energy efficiency, increase energy loss as heat etc etc. You can alter BMR/RMR if you try.
There may be some small differences in how efficiently your body digests food at night than during the day but 2pm vs. 11pm is an incredibly minor optimization. It's like optimizing your array structures when you should be using a hash. The only timing optimization I've heard of which has some scientific backing is the glycogen/metabolic window thought that's exploited for those trying to gain weight.
I think the reason you often hear about the "don't eat at night" advice is that it's easy to do which is what people want to hear. Most people will fallaciously rather follow the advice of "Eat ice cream at 2pm instead of 11pm" than the advice of "Don't eat ice cream at all."
The reason that "don't eat at night" will sometimes appear to work is that people will naturally eat less when you cut out a huge block of time in which they can't eat.
The major thing you don't understand is that what you do now has effects on your gene transcription over the next few months. Small changes can make huge differences not just in the short term, but longer term as well - in terms of your bodies energy efficiency (which you want to decrease if you are wanting to lose weight) and hormonal state (testo/corto relationships et al).
There is tons of research on timing of nutrients. Transcriptome effects of nutrients. Short term hormonal effects. Thermic effect of foods. Etc etc. If one nutrient causes a change in energy out, then that nutrient has less of an effect than one that doesn't. Therefore, some nutrients affect energy balance differently than others.
Tell me this if you still don't believe me: are there any foods or combinations of foods/timing that may cause a statistical difference in energy output in the short, medium and long term in humans?
That said - are we even arguing about the same thing? You responded to my post that addressed the "eating at night" myth and you're going off on effects that food has "over the next few months."
I could write long winded responses with references. The problem is you end up explaining most of biochemistry along with it, as the rabbit hole is truly deep. And people still don't get it, because most people even with undergrad degrees in biochem don't (you don't get to see the rabbit hole until you reach postgrad at most unis and read tons of papers).
It's kind of like trying to explain why functional programming is better than OO to someone who just uses excel.
None of the terminology used should be esoteric if you have studied biochemistry. Apologise for the tone, it is really frustrating seeing someone promote the same old myth.
1. The rabbit hole is deep. What's "healthy" depends how far you want to go down.
2. We don't know know how to eat healthy, just healthier. And what's healthier depends on the resolution you're looking at the body. Also you're particular goals and biology.
3. There's still a lot of conflict about basic things.
4. My old sense of black and white, bad foods and good foods, got destroyed; it wasn't nuanced.
For instance, even spinach and flaxseed contain cyanide [1]. Though not enough to kill you, in extremes they could. That was shocking, and just one example.
With eating and sleeping consider leptin levels. [2][3][4] Some people, because of obesity and overweightedness, in the long-term especially, have awkward leptin sensitivity. Also there are individual differences in genes and gene expression, or overall biology. And exercise factors too.
And that's just one hormone. You add insulin and how that reacts with leptin, and how that's effected by macro-nutrient balance, et cetera. At best I consider myself an intermediate in nutritional knowledge, considering what we now know. The next step up from interpreting papers on PubMed is producing them.
[1] http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/tfacts8.html
[2] http://jcem.endojournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/89/11/5762
[3] http://medicine.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-docum...