Oats Before Bed - Yes or No

N

nickgray

New Member
Having trouble right now getting enough calories in my daily diet, so I want to add some steel cut oats to my bed-time casein protein shake.

Is this a bad idea? Will it make me fat? I have heard "No carbs after 7pm" but I was not sure if it applied to steel cut oats.
 
One can always go by trial and error, and cahnge if you start seeing fat build up.

All nutrition wise people say no carbs after a ceratin time in the afternoon, bacuse they have a tendency to store as fat when one's inactive...My opinion is that yes...carbs should be minimized at late hours but if you are active (exercising that is) then a certain controlled amount will not do damage.

The point is to take your last protein shake an hour before bed (latest) so that your digestion has started, remember circulation slows down quite a bit during sleep, so does your metabolic activity and thus it is better to have digested your meal by then.
 
<div></div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE">Is this a bad idea? Will it make me fat? I have heard &quot;No carbs after 7pm&quot; but I was not sure if it applied to steel cut oats.</div>

Your mail wouldn't even get past the mythbuster's mailbox before it was thrown out. Examine the total amount of calories you consume per day versus how many you burn. Carbs after 7PM may up your weight recording in the morning, but that's about it. You are worrying too much.

Welcome to the HST boards where you will get a fresh new look on health &amp; fitness!
 
Thanks for replying, guys!

This was my first post on these boards and I am really impressed with the quality of response. I am looking forward to learning more about diet and nutrition here.
 
You might really want to seriously consider rethinking that stance, soflsun. Go look around on pubmed if you want to, the research simply does not back up your statement.

Furthermore, my own personal experience with the diet I just ended goes against your statement as well. Consider that I fasted all day long, then took in all my calories in a short window, going to bed immediately after I finished eating all my calories. If the notion you are supporting was true, then that fails to explain why I experienced the fastest, most efficient fat loss of my life. Yes, I know that this is an anecdote that has no scientific value, but I figured it was okay since the article you referenced contained no scientific references or any sort of citations to back up the authors claims.

From the article:
<div></div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE">
Timing also seems to make a difference. In one study, for example, all participants ate the exact same 2,000-calorie meal once a day. One group ate in the morning and the other at night. The group who ate at night gained weight, while the morning group did not. If calories were the only thing that counted, it shouldn't have mattered when they ate them.
</div>

I'd like to see that study, but sadly the author neglected to give us a reference. But... having all participants of a study all consume the exact same amount of calories for the study is BEYOND retarded. I shouldn't have to explain why, but I will anyway.
For this study to be legitimate, they would have to all eat MAINTENANCE and have the only variance be the timing. That might show us something. But having them all consume 2000 calorie meals shows us nothing.
 
Totentanz,

That study is retarded, you are right.  But just look at your own experience...you consumed all of your calories in the evening, yes, but also beginning about 1 hour before your workout and ending when you went to sleep not many hours later.  All of the data I've read confirms that the best utilization of calories is exactly in the window that you consumed them!

This is a perfect example of the theory.  You consumed your calories during time of maximal utilization.  Yes it was in the evening, but that is when you were USING them.  Had you consumd all of your daily calories during breakfast then fasted all day, worked out and went to bed, IMHO you would have gained fat and lost muscle.  But your experience was the exact opposite, due to perfect timing of the calories. How can you argue that? You're living proof that timing works...
 
That's not really relevant to the OP's question though. He asked if eating oats before bed is a bad idea, he didn't ask about post-workout nutrition. My experience shows that eating before bed is no different than if you had taken in the same amount of calories at any other time.

During my diet, I was only working out 2-3 times a week. I did no cardio. So most days, I was not within the post-workout window. I was consuming all my calories before bed, without having worked out. You'd think that would have offset the few days that I did work out, but it didn't.
 
I personally think the carb calories would be better utilized 1-2 hours before you workout rather than right before bed.  It may or may not &quot;make you fat,&quot; that depends on many factors I think.  

I also don't believe &quot;a calorie is a calorie.&quot;  Personally, if I at 3000 calorie diet consisting of 90% carbs as opposed to 90% protein, I believe the change in body composition would be significant.  Not to mention the increase in triglycerides and cholesterol on the high-carb diet.  I eat my oatmeal in the morning, not before bed.

Tot has some &quot;real&quot; experience with this, so I don't take his info lightly, I just think that those results had a lot to do with timing of calories around workouts.
 
Saying a calorie is not a calorie is not the right thing to say.

A calorie is ALWAYS a calorie, just as a kilogram is always a kilogram.

Units of measurement are like that.

But it is nice that you use the same arguement that all of the other people who claim that use. Even the same amount of calories.
 
Aaron, your superior logic will not fool me.  Units of measurement are subjective as I have so brilliantly stated.  A colorie is NOT always a colorie unless that is what they have chosen to be called.  My calories prefer to go by a different name, and they prefer not to disclose that information at this time.
 
<div>
(quadancer @ Oct. 09 2007,19:34)</div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE">My calories are called cheesecake.</div>
x2
 
<div>
(Fausto @ Oct. 05 2007,05:24)</div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE">One can always go by trial and error, and cahnge if you start seeing fat build up.

All nutrition wise people say no carbs after a ceratin time in the afternoon, bacuse they have a tendency to store as fat when one's inactive...My opinion is that yes...carbs should be minimized at late hours but if you are active (exercising that is) then a certain controlled amount will not do damage.

The point is to take your last protein shake an hour before bed (latest) so that your digestion has started, remember circulation slows down quite a bit during sleep, so does your metabolic activity and thus it is better to have digested your meal by then.</div>
Having a &quot;carb cutoff&quot; is just a way to limit total/daily carbohydrates.

Do you think you can really fool your body by having X number of carbs either later in the day or earlier in the day, all else constant?

To the OP - it does not make a lick of difference when you have your oats, assuming you are having the same kcals/carbs in any given scenario.

edit: disclaimer, as far as I know, nobody was talking about post-workout nutrition, where there could theoretically be some small partitioning advantage to putting certain stuff in that window versus other periods of time.
 
I always understood it to be that if you ingested a certain amount of calories, you had a certain time period to burn it off or it would be stored as fat. At least, I think that is the point of this discussion. The carbs at night would have to be low enough in calories for your resting metabolism to burn it.
And it's true. I stopped eating my giant bowl of cereal at night and just carbed up earlier and noticed a slight lessening of the fat accumulation I was experiencing. That's my anecdote as it happened to me with my aging metabolism. I ate that cereal for a good many years first with no harm done.
 
<div>
(Totentanz @ Oct. 07 2007,00:15)</div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE">Furthermore, my own personal experience with the diet I just ended goes against your statement as well. Consider that I fasted all day long, then took in all my calories in a short window, going to bed immediately after I finished eating all my calories. If the notion you are supporting was true, then that fails to explain why I experienced the fastest, most efficient fat loss of my life.</div>
Could you elaborate a bit on this diet you were on or point me to the thread where you described it? Did you eat at maintenance/above or below following your day long fast? How many calories did you eat on the days in between workouts? Thanks.
 
What you eat, what you don't eat, and when you eat it can all have effects. Its as simple and complex as that. Totentanz has called pubmed on you soflson.

&quot;A calorie is not a calorie&quot; which means to say that not all food sources and perhaps not all eating times are the same. Around thirty percent of a protein calorie is required to digest said calorie of protein. It follows then that a calorie of protein is actually 0.70 calories of potential metabolic energy.
 
<div></div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE">&quot;A calorie is not a calorie&quot; which means to say that not all food sources and perhaps not all eating times are the same. Around thirty percent of a protein calorie is required to digest said calorie of protein. It follows then that a calorie of protein is actually 0.70 calories of potential metabolic energy. </div>

&quot;Thermogenesis&quot;
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top