Healthy food to eat at night?
- Thread starter amateursurgeon
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I loves me some fitness talk! Changing your body composition is simple (though not necessarily easy) if you keep in mind the heirarchy of effectiveness. At the bottom is total calorie intake. No matter how great it might be to think that eating 8,000 kcal of steak a day will get you ripped, chances are pretty good that it won't.
First, establish a "maintenance" number for your daily caloric needs. A number that without taking activity into consideration, will keep you at the same weight. If you have no idea, and live a sedentary lifestyle, start with 12-13 times bodyweight. You can incerease the mulitplier if you lift heavy.
Eat at those levels for a few weeks and see what happens. If you put on weight, you set the level too high. Find your level and manipulating your body will become much easier.
Once you have that, it's a matter of having a weekly overage to gain, or deficit to lose. The daily intakes can and should fluctuate with activity levels, ie eat a slight overage on workout days and a deficit on rest days.
Knowing your maintenance calorie levels also lets you figure your macro nutrient ratios. Keep every day at 50-60% protein. On workout days, get a little fat, and the rest complex carbs. On rest days, get the carbs <100g and get the rest of the calories from fat.
Those are the building blocks, and there are tools and techniques you can use to tweak your diet to make it work for you. You can practice intermittent fasting (which works out well on workout days if you save a big, carb loaded meal to eat post workout). You can try carb cycling, ala the 4 hour body where you reduce carbs all week and give yourself a carb load day/meal on the weekend.
In the end, the best diet is the one that you'll actually follow. So what I like to do is write out the ideal plan for me, then try and get close to it. when you come close or spot on, good work. If you mess up, don't let it ruin your day. If you are fucking it up consistently, see if there is something you can tweak in your diet, either timing or macros, or finding a satisfying low cal snack that will help you from getting derailed.
A couple tips:
Avoid nuts and seeds. It's just easier to lose weight without them because your head tells you they are healthy, but the portions to keep them healthy are generaly pretty small. It's hard to avoid overeating them, so just avoid them. Part of the diet battle is not giving yourself the opportunity to fuck it up.
Eat some slow digesting protein before bed to keep you full through the night and into the morning, especially if doing IF. Leangains has a recipe called protein fluff that is great for this. Also take a look at bulletproof coffee on the bulletproofexec to keep yourself filled up in the mornings.
Lift heavy. 3 days a week. Focus on deads, squats, bench, and pullups. Heavy.
Test, test, test. Once you get to a place where you like your body, play with your macros and workouts to see what works for you, and adjust your diet and exercize accordingly.
I use a combination of most of that and it keeps me in decent shape without much time in the gym. YMMV. Good luck bros.
First, establish a "maintenance" number for your daily caloric needs. A number that without taking activity into consideration, will keep you at the same weight. If you have no idea, and live a sedentary lifestyle, start with 12-13 times bodyweight. You can incerease the mulitplier if you lift heavy.
Eat at those levels for a few weeks and see what happens. If you put on weight, you set the level too high. Find your level and manipulating your body will become much easier.
Once you have that, it's a matter of having a weekly overage to gain, or deficit to lose. The daily intakes can and should fluctuate with activity levels, ie eat a slight overage on workout days and a deficit on rest days.
Knowing your maintenance calorie levels also lets you figure your macro nutrient ratios. Keep every day at 50-60% protein. On workout days, get a little fat, and the rest complex carbs. On rest days, get the carbs <100g and get the rest of the calories from fat.
Those are the building blocks, and there are tools and techniques you can use to tweak your diet to make it work for you. You can practice intermittent fasting (which works out well on workout days if you save a big, carb loaded meal to eat post workout). You can try carb cycling, ala the 4 hour body where you reduce carbs all week and give yourself a carb load day/meal on the weekend.
In the end, the best diet is the one that you'll actually follow. So what I like to do is write out the ideal plan for me, then try and get close to it. when you come close or spot on, good work. If you mess up, don't let it ruin your day. If you are fucking it up consistently, see if there is something you can tweak in your diet, either timing or macros, or finding a satisfying low cal snack that will help you from getting derailed.
A couple tips:
Avoid nuts and seeds. It's just easier to lose weight without them because your head tells you they are healthy, but the portions to keep them healthy are generaly pretty small. It's hard to avoid overeating them, so just avoid them. Part of the diet battle is not giving yourself the opportunity to fuck it up.
Eat some slow digesting protein before bed to keep you full through the night and into the morning, especially if doing IF. Leangains has a recipe called protein fluff that is great for this. Also take a look at bulletproof coffee on the bulletproofexec to keep yourself filled up in the mornings.
Lift heavy. 3 days a week. Focus on deads, squats, bench, and pullups. Heavy.
Test, test, test. Once you get to a place where you like your body, play with your macros and workouts to see what works for you, and adjust your diet and exercize accordingly.
I use a combination of most of that and it keeps me in decent shape without much time in the gym. YMMV. Good luck bros.
True dat. Diet is more controversial around here than race & religion combined. For every one person that will tell you something, you'll have 3 others saying the exact opposite.
Just figure out what works for you and stick to it.
(inb4 someone says that's the most ridiculous thing they've ever heard and it would never work)
You should avoid eating for several hours before you go to bed. This will prevent you from turning those calories into fat. Instead, you should drink copious amounts of beer. This will accomplish two important goals that will help you keep a slender attractive figure.
Everyone knows sleep is important. Drink lots of beer will ensure that you're able to fall asleep and stay asleep all night long. Pro tip, if you aren't able to fall asleep right away, go look at some titties.
If you followed the first step correctly you'll wake up in the afternoon. Boom, you just cut out all the calories you would have eaten for breakfast. Rinse and repeat for weight loss success.
Everyone knows sleep is important. Drink lots of beer will ensure that you're able to fall asleep and stay asleep all night long. Pro tip, if you aren't able to fall asleep right away, go look at some titties.
If you followed the first step correctly you'll wake up in the afternoon. Boom, you just cut out all the calories you would have eaten for breakfast. Rinse and repeat for weight loss success.
Finally someone with some decent advice.
IMO there are not any finite rules, only guidelines. Each persons body chemistry is different and each person responds differently. We all know people who eat nothing but Big-macs and ice-cream bars and still have a 6 pack. Learn to listen to your body and react accordingly, particularly about carbohydrate intake.
With that said, my middle of the road tips.
-Yes to eating fat at night. Good fat for the most part. Why?
- Fat is essential to proper hormone release, most of which is released at night
- Fat will keep you fuller longer
- All kinds of health benefits from healthy fats
- Will help keep blood sugar levels more consistent throughout the night, particularly when taken with other food.
The Fruit debate...
- I say no to most, and in moderation if you are. A few berries or something late at night is not going to make or break you, but fruit is still made up of fructose (fruit sugar)... which is a bad sugar.
-Sugar late at night, particularly this type will spike up your insulin levels. Growth hormone will not release in proper amounts when insulin is present. Growth hormone is mainly released at night. So avoid the majority of insulin inducing foods. The fiber in some fruit is good, don't get me wrong, but the other downsides outweigh it in my opinion. So if you want a little, go for it, but don't go crazy. Using a sensible approach for the long run will give you better results then doing something extreme for a month then dropping it.
Dairy: Cottage Cheese + Casein Protein.
- I'll have some debaters on this for sure but I say avoid it. I personally used to take it in as well as I'm sure many of you do. The theory being that it is slow released protein so you won't go all catabolic in your sleep. But... I believe, and there is research to back me up somewhere, that casein can lead more towards fat gain. It is more of the "dairy" protein. On top of that, many people tend to get some slight inflammation from it (for all those who take it, trade it in for high quality lactose free whey isolate for a week and see how you look when you wake up). I'm not going to try and find the info so take it how you will.
- On top of that, I actually believe that it is good to go into a slight fasted state when you sleep (for part of the time, not all). It seems to be necessary in some ways.
So with all that said I now take a natural whey isolate protein shake with about 30 grams, and try to have either almonds or healthy oils of some kind.
For the advice given earlier of to avoid nuts, if you can eat some and force yourself to wait 20 min, your body will register the nutrition in them (omegas and shit) and you will lose your hunger within a few minutes usually.
Former personal trainer and nutrition adviser
Well, I really wish I knew what I know now and went straight to how I eat now, it has definitely been a bit of a journey for me.
I started off by just going vegan and lost some weight pretty quickly (20 lbs in 2 months).
Some of the stuff I was eating was pretty high fat though and I had a hard time knocking more weight off as things progressed. It wasn't really until I significantly cut out the fat where I started dropping more weight. I basically went low fat vegan after a while and shed even more weight rather quickly.
From there I slowly started transitioning to raw. At first, I started incorporating more and more raw foods but making one mistake - I was again adding a shitload of fat via nuts/oils and felt like complete garbage. I felt a lot worse when I ate high fat raw than I did low fat cooked.
It made no sense to me that I would feel like complete shit on raw food. It wasn't till I started tracking my food and nearly shat myself when I saw over 100 grams of fat in one day. I started to do some more reading on the subject and found that there are 2 significantly different views on the whole thing. One - is the side that basically promotes high fat raw (lots of nuts, oils, etc) and another that is low fat raw - high fruit. And so currently I am basically 99% low fat raw (might have a slip up and have some potato). Here's a video of what piqued my interest in the first place:
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ei0lv8f9GJo]My AMAZING 40lb WEIGHT LOSS on Raw Food. Before & Afters - YouTube[/ame]
I eat a shitload of fruit + greens and occasionally nuts/seeds/avos. This knocked off the remaining few pounds and I've been basically maintaining my weight now while getting to eat a SHITLOAD of fruit. When I say shitload, I mean shitload.
Basically I eat about 3 large fruit meals of 1000+ calories as well as a green salad following that. Sometimes I'll eat more often but less in one setting depending on how I'm feeling and what kinda ripe fruit I have. As you can imagine, that's a lot of food and it's going to keep you full for a long time. You're not going to crave garbage because your stomach is going to be FULL.
Here's some pics of my stash and food and what I eat. Basically I stack more fruit than Tarzan. I'd also post a before and after but I don't feel like ending up on someone's weight loss lander. Basically, my transformation looks similar to the vid above, except add 2 more chins to starting pic. I went from about 190 to 140. (IN B4 OMG 2 SKINNY!!)
First pic is of what one of my days looks like. Obviously, this varies depending on what fruit I have on hand and what I feel like eating.
If really sweet fruit is giving you trouble it's not the sugar or carbs or anything like that. It's all the fat you still have in your system clogging you up and your body's inability to process all that sugar because of it. It's actually a pretty bad idea to combine high fat + fruits, you're just going to feel like shit. It's gotta be one or the other.
Good luck to the haters with your high fat and protein powders bros. Been dere done that I'll take my fruit thank you very much.
Been waiting for days.. My finger is tired of refreshing this thread lol
Now I can sleep..
PS: Now I understand the meaning of shitload. graphically.
I am not ready to go Vegan, but I plan to increase the amount of fruits and veggies, insanely and have like Meat/Fish once a week.
Now I can sleep..
PS: Now I understand the meaning of shitload. graphically.
I am not ready to go Vegan, but I plan to increase the amount of fruits and veggies, insanely and have like Meat/Fish once a week.
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Not sure what you're goal body is, but from someone who trains a lot and is on ironmag forums 2x as much as this, you're going to want to increase your protein intake...even if you aren't trying to be a body builder. Fruit is awesome but you still have to eat it in the right portions. A good choice is always a salad. It's easy to get the right portions with it. I like to add a few small pieces of fruit to my salad (and chicken) with either no dressing or something like basalmic vingerette. Skip the ranch, cheese, and bacon bits. If you must have cheese, grab a healthy one like feta cheese.
If you're trying to cut weight, do a simple carb cycle with lean gains. It's super easy and will never stop working. There is a reason bodybuilders can get to 5-6% body fat so quickly
If you're looking for sources, whey is obviously a good choice. My second recommendation would be beans or nuts (be careful with portions on nuts). Another great source is greek yogurt. Not sure if that fits in the whole vegan thing or w.e.
If you have any specific questions, hit me up on skype. I've got a ton of experience with this and have a body that turns heads. No, I don't do skype shows lulz
Honestly surprised this thread has gotten to almost 100 posts and nobody has mentioned the best healthy food to eat at night.
Vagina.
Yeah, you're welcome bros.
Vagina.
Yeah, you're welcome bros.
lol @ "eat fruit before bed"... enjoy being fat
even bigger lol @ vegans... enjoy your malnutrition and hair shedding
even bigger bigger lol @ the guy eating only fruit... enjoy your diabetes
did you idiots get your nutritional advice from acai landing pages?
even bigger lol @ vegans... enjoy your malnutrition and hair shedding
even bigger bigger lol @ the guy eating only fruit... enjoy your diabetes
did you idiots get your nutritional advice from acai landing pages?