Have you ever wondered…What’s the best nighttime snack for weight loss?
A: In a word: sleep! All snacks have calories because all food has calories. Weight loss is calories in – vs – calories out, so there is no way on this planet that adding calories will help with weight loss.
The Zero Calorie “Snack”
Sleep has zero calories. Unless you’re on sleeping meds**, sleep prevents most people from eating. Nighttime eating is often about entertainment or stimulating our senses, and since we’ve already had our fruits, veggies, protein, etc. we generally turn to entertaining and high calorie munchies.
Given these snacks are consumed in front of a screen or two we’re also not paying attention to how much we’re eating. This can pack 500 to 1,000 calories. 500 calories per day x 7 days per week = about 1 pound of weight gain per week, or, 1 pound per week that you are not losing since your hard work is getting eaten up at nighttime. (With that said, most people are gaining 1-3 pounds per year, so maintaining your weight is an accomplishment in our obesigenic environment.)
Removing the stimulation of food will increase your boredom, but that’s not a bad thing since boredom helps us get sleepy. You might fall asleep before you finish this season of Bridgerton, but, fear not, it will still be there to stream tomorrow.
Furthermore getting enough sleep helps you wake up on time, improves your will power and self control the next day, gives you more energy for your workouts, improves recovery between your workouts, improves learning and retention, improves mood, and so much more.
Snack List?
If you really insist on a list of things you can consume that will help with weight loss, I went through the trouble of painstakingly creating one for you here.
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