Foods To Avoid At Night For Weight Loss: Top 6 Worst Foods 2024

Will eating late at night cause weight gain? Absolutely, especially if you’re not already very active, or even simply eating when you even not really feel hungry. 

Balancing your lifestyle so that you’re eating throughout the day is what most will recommend—the body burns more calories during the day than at night, and your diet should ideally reflect the times that you’re most active.

What are the worst foods to eat late at night to avoid weight gain? Ice cream and soda are both huge offenders, but some of the other midnight snacks on this list may surprise you.

It’s crazy, but it’s true: your body will react differently to an identical meal,^[1] depending on whether you eat it in the morning, afternoon, or night. Nighttime eating will offer some health benefits, such as the fact that it may help you repair muscle overnight, but few of these benefits will help you lose body weight if losing weight is your goal. 

What are the foods to avoid eating at night for weight loss? In some cases, you should avoid eating late at night at all, but if you’re highly active and have a rumbling tummy, something’s gotta give.

What causes late-night eating? There are plenty of prevailing theories on why we overindulge after hours.^[2] Becoming more familiar with yourself when you head to the kitchen at night might help you prevent late-night eating from being a problem at all.

Let’s cut to the chase, though—what makes these foods the worst to eat before bed if you want to lose weight?

What To Eat At Night To Lose Weight?

High-Carb, Oil-Laden Fat Bombs

Fast food, junk food, and fried food all have a lot in common, including the fact that they’re likely to make you gain weight at any time of day. However, eating foods like these at night may have a much more significant impact on your body mass index than eating them at normal mealtime hours.

We’ll target fast food in particular—it’s a dangerous American habit, and those who eat fast food as a staple part of their diets double the risk they pose to their heart health, their kidney health, and even their overall lifespan. Processed food is more than just easy, convenient, and cheap; it’s also chemically addictive,^[3] which means when it’s on your plate, you are much more likely to eat too much of it.

If you can’t leave fast food behind you entirely, your best bet is to create a rule about how late you allow yourself to run out and grab some. If you have impulse control issues around fried, processed snack foods from the store, we would simply try to abstain from buying them for a while, at least until you meet your weight loss goals.

Soda Pop

Soda is an easy thing to grab late at night, especially if you’re up late working, gaming, chatting with friends, or surfing the web. While we’re mainly concerned with high-sugar, high-fructose corn syrup-laden soda with lots of extra calories, we should also qualify this recommendation with the fact that diet soda is no better late at night.

The sugar content and calories in soda are more than likely^[4] to cause weight gain, and the caffeine that it may contain will only keep you up way later than you should. The artificial sweeteners may enhance your hunger and send you a craving for calorie-laden snacks.

Ice Cream

Ice cream is another late-night snack in our top three foods to avoid at night for weight loss- rife with calories and a huge amount of sugar, the protein content that some brands contain is simply not worth the trade-off that you make when you scoop late in the evening.

One study published^[5] offered obese children and children of normal weight ice cream on an ad-lib basis. Those who were already overweight appeared to consume more ice cream because they were not making the cognitive connection between intake and satiation.

This finding suggests that self-monitoring when left to our own devices may, to some extent, be an intrinsic quality—we’re just as guilty of busting out the entire tub at once for movie night. We find that it’s so much easier to lose weight by avoiding these options at the grocery store before they have a chance to through your diet and nutrition totally off-course. 

Alcoholic Beverages

If you’re on a diet, we consider alcohol to be in our top 6 foods to avoid at night for weight loss – booze has tons of calories, is readily absorbed by the body, and contains basically no nutrition. You do the math.

Aside from the toll that drinking late at night will impose on your belly and waistline, alcohol is absolutely terrible^[6] in terms of sleep quality after consumption, weight loss journey aside. Your inebriation may help you fall asleep faster, but, as your blood alcohol levels decline, you’ll find yourself bolt-awake as soon as you sober up. 

Our advice: break the cycle, and save yourself the calories for a better healthy snack. When you’re well-rested, your body will be operating more smoothly and your stress hormones won’t be running rampant, which means you’ll be in a calmer, happier state of mind, one more inclined to healthy decisions throughout the following day. The system works.

Cereal And Milk

Cereal and milk can be dangerous for dieters for two main reasons:

• It’s easy to eat a much larger portion than strictly necessary, which means more calories right before you sleep
• It can often be highly processed and full of sugar, equating to a huge calorie bomb before you sleep, even if you only eat a small cup 

While cereal and milk are a delicious treat and extremely convenient in a pinch, you should try steering clear of even whole-grain cereals late at night. 

The timing of every meal that you eat has been shown to play a huge role in how each meal is processed and stored within the body. This study published found that avoiding late-night snacking^[7] might be able to help you achieve your weight loss goals, especially with your eating breakfast at an aptly time the following morning.

This, on its own, is more than enough of a reason to save that cereal bowl for the next day ahead. It’ll end up being fuel for your morning instead of weighing you down all night long.

Big Portions Of Anything

One association that’s been made with late-night eating: those who do subscribe to the habit tend to eat much more of their daily caloric allotment at night during these sessions, as opposed to throughout the day. This is the hallmark of a tragic cycle, one in which the eater eats so much at night that they spoil their appetite for the entire next day.

This has more to do with your biomechanics than a simple full stomach, although that does play some role in the drawback of eating too much at night. Glucose tolerance, gastric emptying, and even your resting metabolism^[8] are all thrown totally out-of-whack when you eat large portions of food late at night, and you might find it more difficult to lose weight than your would otherwise.

What To Eat At Night For Weight Loss?

Despite the list above, you shouldn’t necessarily go to bed super hungry; doing so may lead to overeating in the morning and even cutting into the good gains you’ve made in lean muscle development. 

Simple bedtime snacks like nut butter on whole-grain bread and cottage cheese are both highly delicious, providing a decent dose of energy and protein, and are easy to prepare on a whim. Why go the extra mile when everything you need is right here already?

What are the best foods to eat before bed to lose weight fast? The best foods for better sleep, weight loss, heart disease, and overall health are small snacks^[9] that are nutrient-dense and easy for the body to absorb: 

• Peanut butter on whole-wheat bread
• Hummus and whole-grain crackers
• Greek yogurt and fruit
• A glass of skim milk
• Cottage cheese
• A fruit smoothie
• Part-skim mozzarella string cheese
• A hard-boiled egg, or any other easily-digested source of protein
• Some caffeine-free tea

Nighttime nutrition should serve you in the morning^[10] – any of the healthy night-friendly above will help you through your weight loss journey, promote sleep of quality, and keep you on course for your cardio and resistance training, as well as for school, work, and the rest of your life left to live. 

Conclusion

As long as you’re maintaining your physical activity levels and avoiding anything with lots of fat, calories, and added sugar, you should be fine. A snack at night now and again may cause poor sleep, but as long as you’re using all of the calories and nutrition that you take in, your diet should be fine. 

With that being said, in defense of losing weight and a good night’s sleep, you should actively consume most of your daily calories, protein, and nutrition at regular meals eaten for a more comprehensively wholesome relationship with your diet. You’ll look better, feel better, and when you’re totally satisfied, you’ll be much less likely to reach for the ice cream when nature comes calling. It sucks, but your body and your health will thank you.

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