Does eating late at night cause weight gain? How to advise your body contouring client.

body contouring client

So your body contouring client tells you she wants to lose weight or at least maintain her weight.  Have you repeated the advice most often given to you?  “Do not eat later than 5 pm.”

 

Stop eating early in the day for weight loss – a form of Intermittent Fasting.

This theory – a form of intermittent fasting  – does make sense – but has never been proven by clinical studies.  It’s what many of us have believed.

It turns out that when you eat may not matter.

Medical weight loss experts have long opined that eating all or most of your calories before 5 pm leads to a healthier weight.  In other words, it’s not just what you eat, it’s when you eat that matters.  This theory, based upon the belief that your body more efficiently uses calories the earlier you eat, has recently been debunked.

 

It turns out time-restricted eating is not that simple at all.

Study shows the number of calories you take in matters, but not when you take them in.

Dr. Nisa Maruthur of Johns Hopkins University, presented results of her study showing it does not matter when you eat your calories, at the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions  in November 2020.  In a tightly controlled study, she and her colleagues found overweight adults who ate the majority of their calories prior to 1 pm for three months failed to lose more weight than those who ate their biggest meal after 5 pm.  All participants ate the same meals provided by the study’s metabolic kitchen.  The only thing that differed was the time of day for the meals.   At the end of three months, both groups lost weight but there was no difference in weight loss for the group who stopped eating early and the group who ate following a standard schedule.

 

Is it really this simple?  Maybe we should consider other factors.  When you eat less frequently, it makes sense you eat less overall.

Restricting your eating window, i.e. Intermittent Fasting, reduces intake & should lead to weight loss

The overall body of medical science supports the findings in Dr. Maruthur’s study.  Restricting your eating window may or may not affect weight loss.

 

Despite the findings of this study, we do believe Intermittent Fasting provides many benefits and will address that and other weight loss tricks you can use for weight loss advice in our future articles.

 

Restricting your eating window likely changes (reduces) the amount you eat and maybe even the types of food you choose to eat.  And what about calories in and calories out?  We respectfully point out that while the researcher controlled calorie intake, she made no reference to activity level, i.e. calories out.

 

Here we go again – Calories In, Calories Out.

So we find ourselves right back to what we’ve known since the dawn of metabolic science –  the secret to maintaining a healthy weight and to losing unwanted pounds comes down to energy consumed and energy expended.  In other words, counting total calories in and total calories out.

 

Expending more energy than consumed is indeed the secret to weight loss, but there exists so many ways you can help your client on her weight loss journey.

 

Assist your body contouring client with weight loss with these treatments.

The next time a client tells you that her weight is a concern, you know what to say.

Offer your expert knowledge (what you just learned!) and consider offering all or one of these treatments to expedite and optimize her weight loss journey:

 

Visit www.bodycontouringacademy.com for more information about building and growing your  business using non-invasive body contouring. 

Posted in Weight Loss