Eating Carbs at Night to Lose Your Belly Fat?

Eating carbs at night to lose your belly fat has long been a no-no for any diet plan. In fact, pretty much eating anything after dinner has been frowned upon.

A new study published in Obesity contradicts the “no eating carbs at night” idea when it comes to losing weight. The study followed 78 police obese police officers over a 6 month period. They were randomly assigned to one of two different diets.

The nutrient breakdown was the same for each diet (approximately 45 to 50% carbohydrates, 20 percent protein and 30 to 35% fat) as well as the same number of calories daily (1,300 to 1,500 calories).

There was one distinct difference between the two groups.

One would eat their carbs steadily throughout the day while the other group would be eating carbs at night. They wouldn’t just eat carbs at night, they would eat the majority of their carbohydrates during dinner.

The “eating carbs at night” group lost more weight (11.6 vs. 9.06 kg) and also had lower hunger scores as well as greater improvements in fasting glucose, average daily insulin concentrations, and insulin-resistance.

Carbs raise insulin levels which can promote body fat storage. It’s possible that the group eating carbs throughout the day was constantly raising insulin levels, allowing the body to become more efficient when it came to storing body fat.

As I’ve talked about in the Secret Abs Manifesto report, one reason for these results could be the changes in leptin secretion. You can read more about it here, but basically leptin is a protein secreted by your fat cells that helps to regulate apetite. Turning on leptin (which could happen with the carbs at night group) can decrease appetite.

The reason for this study, according to the researchers…

“…consumption of carbohydrates mostly in the evening would modify the typical diurnal pattern of leptin secretion as observed in Muslim populations during Ramadan. The experimental diet induced a single daily insulin secretion in the evening, thus it was predicted that the diet would lead to higher relative concentrations of leptin starting 6–8 h later i.e., in the morning and throughout the day. This may lead to enhanced satiety during daylight hours and improve dietary adherence.”

They also stated that…

“Studies have shown that there is a negative correlation between insulin and adiponectin levels. Since the experimental diet used in this study reduces insulin secretion during the day, it was also hypothesized that adiponectin concentrations would increase throughout the day improving insulin resistance, diminishing symptoms of the metabolic syndrome and lowering inflammatory markers.”

There were many other benefits from the eating carbs at night group such as lower levels of various inflammation markers, improved lipid profile, etc.

As always, and the study authors make this clear…

“Further research is required to confirm and clarify the mechanisms by which this relatively simple diet approach enhances satiety, leads to better anthropometric outcomes, and achieves improved metabolic response, compared to a more conventional dietary approach.”

Keep in mind that the groups were closely monitored as to their overall calorie intake as well. Why do I mention this? Because there are always consequences.

I believe one of the main reasons to restrict someone’s carbohydrate intake to earlier in the day isn’t about improved weight loss directly, but calorie control indirectly. It’s a lot easier to eat too many calories by eating carbs than by eating a meal of protein and fats.

If you can control your calorie intake, by all means, make an adjustment to your diet and try shifting to eating carbs at night more than you do now. As it may turn out eating carbs at night could be good for your body transformation results.

However, if calorie control is a struggle for you, you might not want that plateful of pasta before bed time.