Carb cutoff – does cutting carbs at night help weight loss?
A few weeks ago, I ran into an old friend that I hadn’t seen in a long time. We’d been friends when our kids were small, and I remembered him as being a little on the heavy side. Now he was much trimmer – he looked like he had lost about 25 pounds. After I complimented him, he volunteered his secret – “no carbs after five o’clock”.
Now let me just say that I usually don’t offer nutrition advice to friends – unless they ask, of course.
When a situation like this comes up, there’s always a part of me that wants to say, “I hope you haven’t cut out healthy fruits and vegetables” or, “it’s not when you eat the carbs that matters – it’s just that you’re eating less of them.” But I’m not about to pop anyone’s balloon – especially if they’ve found an eating strategy that works for them.
The idea of a carb cutoff (and, by the way, the strategy really refers to the ‘starchy’ carbs like rice, bread, potatoes and pasta – not the healthy carbs like fruits and veggies) works primarily because people use it like a ‘food rule’ – as in, “I only eat dessert once a week”, or “I make sure to have protein with every meal or snack”. Carbohydrates aren’t any more fattening in the evening than they are at any other time of the day – it’s just that your evening meal probably used to include them, and now it doesn’t. Cut out a portion of rice, a baked potato or a pile of pasta at night – or any time of the day, for that matter – and you easily eliminate a few hundred calories. That’s why the carb cutoff strategy works.
It’s a bit like the old idea of food combining, which suggested that your body couldn’t digest certain types of foods when eaten together – like proteins and carbohydrates. Obviously, if you subscribed to this notion, you’d almost automatically cut calories. No more could you eat your usual eggs, toast and fruit in the morning – you were stuck with either eggs or toast and fruit, but not all three. There wasn’t anything magical about food combining. Any way you sliced it, you were simply eating less.
Part of the reason the carb cutoff may work for people is that the evening meal tends to be the largest – so not eating starches in the evening might cut out more calories than if you cut them at other (usually smaller) meals during the day. And, if you’re replacing those starchy carbs with, say, a bigger pile of veggies, that’s going to save you a bundle of calories too.
When it comes down to it, food combining or carb cutoffs are just strategies that might help you to limit your calorie intake. And even if they’re gimmicks, so what? If you eat less when you eat with your left hand instead of your usual right, or if you eat less when you eat only one color of food per day (one of my patients tried this…she gave up when she got to blue), it doesn’t matter to me – as long as you’re eating a well-balanced diet and meeting your nutrient needs.
Just keep in mind that if you eat more than you should – at any time, carbs or no carbs – your weight isn’t going to budge. When the carb cutoff rule doesn’t work for people, it’s usually because they make up for it during the day – packing in as many carbs as they can before curfew time.
Written by Susan Bowerman. Susan is a paid consultant to Herbalife.
Tags: Carb cutoff, carbohydrate, diet plan, eating plan, food rule, Herbalife, how to diet, nutrition facts, Susan Bowerman, Weight Loss, WeightLoss
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…food combining does have its place. if you have poor digestion you do NOT want to eat high protein with high starch as the starch will slow down the digestion of the protein leaving it fermenting in your stomach and intestines. The longer the food is inside of you the more toxins you body takes back in. Starches need an alkaline environment to be broken down properly and proteins need an acidic environment. If your digestion is poor then you will not be able to digest the foods completely thus leading to even worse digestions and allergies/sensitivities…
MUCHAS GRACIAS POR LA INFORMACION REALMENTE UTIL PARA NUESTRA SALUD .
I would like to add that the answers have not addressed what actually happens in the body during carbs restriction biochemically, understanding ketosis and lipolysis helps people to understand why carb restriction is helpful. Also, every carbohydrate, no matter where it comes from contains 4 calories per gram the same as protein so the answer is not how much you consume or when the answer is your bodies reaction to an intake of carbs compared to an intake of fats and proteins. Also, all studies done on calorie restriction prove that not only is it ineffective its potentially damaging as most people undertaking a calorie restrictive programme do not take into account their BMR or their activity factor so ultimately set themselves up to eventually gain the weight back and more. If anyone is interested in finding out more drop me an email, this isn’t guess work and only comes from personal professional experience. Thank you for reading. :)
I must beg to differ with this article on the “when” not being an issue about carbs. The truth is that the “when” is directly related to the “why”, which is a major player in determining the “how much”. If one is snacking on after supper, it is generally safe to say that it is a craving temptation, which often leads to excessive consumption. Now, if you are excessively consuming celery with rasins and raw almond butter, you are very likely to suffer many fewer negative concequences than if the exess happens to be in Oreos or corn flakes. I just thought that this might be pertainant information.
So logical, so simple, yet so enlightening. I’ve encountered so many people whose diets are composed of “eating whatever you want as long as its before 5pm”. I can’t wait to show this to them!
Dear Brandon,
Thanks for writing.
Although it would seem to make sense that eating right before you go to sleep would lead you to store more calories as fat, that just isn’t the case.
Energy stores in the body (in muscle, liver and fat tissue) are constantly in flux. If you eat right before you go to bed and store the calories, you’ll just pull them out of storage to be used at another time. As I mentioned in the article, calories are no more fattening at 10 PM than they are at 10 AM. The bottom line is that if you consume more calories than you need, then over time, you will gain weight. Conversely, if you eat fewer calories than you need, at any time of the day, it should result in weight loss.
The point of the article is that when people create a ‘cutoff’ time for eating (and that could be anything, by the way; fats, proteins, or carbs), in most cases they’re losing weight because they’re not eating at a time when they previously did. For instance, someone who is used to grazing all evening and then decides not to eat after 5 PM will be cutting back on his or her calorie consumption.
The carb cutoff stategy is aimed at those seeking weight loss, which is why the strategy (not mine) suggests cutting out higher-calorier carbohydrates such as starches after the cutoff. Of course, individuals who are very active need to consume plenty of complex carbohydrates in their diet to meet energy needs for exercise.
Susan
One thing you should also probably mention, is that cutting anything out of your diet after a certain time is fine, but that specific time should be determined by what time you typically go to sleep. The whole reason that late night carbs are bad is because you usually go to sleep shortly after, so they sit overnight and don’t get burnt up. If you usually hit the hay around 1am because of your work schedule or whatever the reason, 5pm would be WAY too early of a time to start cutting anything. Again, I’m saying in terms of things you cut simply because of the time of day. If you are limiting something in your diet altogether, that’s a different story. That’s why so many people struggle with diets and following the “late night” rule because no one ever explains WHY you should cut certain foods at a certain time. I explained that to my mom 2 years ago because she always tried to cut everything after 6pm and would always get to the point where she couldn’t help herself because the cravings were too much for her. I explained to her that it’s because she’s still up for 7 hours after she cuts those foods out. She moved her cut off time to 10pm-11pm (she usually goes to sleep a little after 1:30am), never has an issue or a craving and doesn’t miss a day, and has lost 30 healthy pounds over 2 years with little to no exercise outside of walking at her work.
Another thing, you said, “….and, by the way, the strategy really refers to the ‘starchy’ carbs like rice, bread, potatoes and pasta – not the healthy carbs like fruits and veggies….” “Starchy” carbs in this comparison are deemed “unhealthy” since you described fruits and vegetables solely as “healthy” carbs. Starches are NOT unhealthy, and depending on your daily calorie needs, how active you are, etc., starchy carbs could be a VERY important part of your diet. I dare you to tell someone who runs everyday or swims for hours on end everyday to cut their starches. That’d be awful advice. Starches are NOT unhealthy, they just need to be used wisely since they are slower burning than carbs from fruits and vegetables, so if you don’t use that energy, then yes, you need to cut those because it’s almost the same as just getting extra fat in your diet. But, if it’s being used properly (i.e., you’re going for a 10 mile run in the morning so you eat quite a bit of pasta the night before, or you’re going for a run late in the evening so you get those starches in the mid-afternoon, etc.) it will properly equip your body for the task at hand.
The “bad” carbs we need to limit/cut out are those “empty” carbs, CERTAIN breads, CERTAIN types of rice (seems like pretty much anything that is called “white…..” falls in this category), candy, etc.
Great article; nigh time snacking has always been my downfall.