I think most folks have heard about the recommendation around not eating carbs after 6pm, it was a super popular idea at one point. I remember even Oprah was pushing the message back in the day and I think once I explain how this can work for fat loss, it’ll become super obvious as to why!

If you don’t eat any carbohydrates after 6pm that means you’re eliminating all JUNK FOOD by default so cookies, ice cream, doughnuts, cake, chips…I honestly can’t think of one junk food item that doesn’t contain any carbs, so essentially implementing no carbs after 6pm literally means no junk or heavily processed food as a whole.

Now, when do we consume the majority of the junk food in our diet, or when are we most likely to eat treats? It’s definitely at night…after dinner we want something sweet, we plop down in front of the TV and munch away.

Now if we eliminate carbs or junk food after 6pm that completely cuts out snacking stuff after dinner, so if someone implements this they’re going to see some serious fat loss results because they’re drastically reducing their overall calorie intake.

Then when they see those results they go, ‘I knew it the carbs were making me fat!’

Now as a fun little thought experiment what if we still implemented the same 6pm cut-off, but we used fat instead. No fat after 6pm…

It turns out, virtually all junk food contains fat as well…cookies, ice cream, doughnuts, cake, chips. There are a couple exceptions, which are typically those gummy candies like sour keys and stuff, they fat-free but let’s put that exception aside just for a second.

All of sudden if we eliminate fat after 6pm we cut out all the same foods and when we cut junk food out when we’re most likely to eat it we reduce calorie intake, and when we reduce calorie intake we lose weight.

So this example explains super clearly that it’s not carbs or fat that are inherently fattening, but rather the combination of both because foods that contain appreciable amounts of fat and carbs are almost always man-made processed foods. Large carb and fat combos don’t really exist in nature via single ingredient whole foods, it’s one or the other. 

It’s almost like Mother Nature knew what she was doing!

So now that we’ve squared away the carbs after 6pm myth and how overall calorie intake is the most important piece of the fat loss puzzle, it’s worth mentioning the best fat loss protocol or program is the one that you follow.

This is actually why I have all of my clients eat carbohydrates at night, unless they specifically don’t want them at night and when I say night I mean at dinner but that’s incredibly rare. I’ve worked with hundreds and hundreds of folks and I can count on one hand how many people that didn’t want at least some carbs with their dinner meal.

When are most folks the most hungry or in other words when do people typically like to eat a larger meal…breakfast, lunch or dinner? It’s typically dinner.

When are folks the most likely to fall off track, slip up or eat funky calorie dense junk foods? Like we talked about before, it’s after dinner when they’re watching some Netflix.

So, if most folks like their biggest meal to be dinner and the time when they’re most likely to indulge is after dinner, in my mind it makes the most sense from a practicality and adherence to the program standpoint to have dinner be the biggest meal of the day.

Let’s work with our tendencies and preferences as opposed to against them!

It just doesn’t seem logical to me to put someone’s biggest meal in a spot where they’re least likely to indulge and less hungry, that doesn’t add up.

Therefore, I typically put the biggest portion of carbohydrates in someone’s day at dinner for this very reason. Total calories are the most important thing when it comes to fat loss, so let’s structure our intake in a way that makes it as easy as possible or as seamless as it can be to adhere to a lower calorie intake…right!?

Eating predominantly single ingredient whole foods is a close second to monitoring total calories consumed, because whole foods keep you nice and full and if you’re full, again you can adhere to that total calorie number much easier than if you feel hungry…hunger isn’t sustainable.

Now if you are someone who likes to have their biggest meal be breakfast or lunch then I would bias your intake towards those meals, but for the vast majority of folks and I’m talking 98% it makes sense to have dinner be the largest meal in order to set yourself up for success.

If you feel super satisfied at night or you feel nice and full, you’re less likely to eat treats, now on the other hand if you ate the majority of your food at breakfast, a medium lunch and just had a tiny dinner…you’re then sitting around with your family watching Netflix hungry, that’s not the situation ya want!

So as you can see I like to look at the big picture when it comes to structuring a client’s program, overall adherence is king. On paper you can put together the best nutrition program in the world but if someone isn’t going to stick to it, it’s essentially useless.

There may be some sticklers out there that are probably saying, ‘but Marcus, what about the chrononutrition research’…chrononutrition is a fancy way of saying how meal timing impacts physiological processes or basically your body’s processes. Chrono meaning time and nutrition meaning nutrition.

The research on chrononutrition seems to show that there may be a benefit to eating more of your calories earlier in the day and that resulting in a beneficial impact on metabolism as a whole and honestly, to me this is where the research and science simply don’t match up with real world practical implementation that works.

This idea circles back around to the best plan being the one that you can follow and that means everyone’s program or strategy will be a little different because we all have different lifestyles. The general principles are constant, but weaving together the physical, mental and emotional pieces of the puzzle results in a different strategy or bottom line for everybody.

Sure, you can bias your calories to earlier in the day, but try telling a 35 year old or someone with a couple of kids to eat a big breakfast, a smaller lunch and then have an even smaller dinner at like 4pm…

That just doesn’t pan out for the vast majority of folks in the real world unless all of their friends are 85 years old and go to bed at 830pm.

So is there a slight benefit to eating more earlier in the day and slightly less later in the day, maybe…but trying to follow a setup like that, getting hungry at night and then indulging in junk food at 9pm isn’t a healthy or effective fat loss strategy, so there are trade-offs to be made and I think the bottom line question is…what’s the ultimate goal?

The ultimate goal is a happy healthy human and I just don’t think eating dinner at 4 or 5pm is the most practical way to go about that for most folks.

A couple more reasons you may want to include carbs or a larger meal at night is that going to sleep hungry sucks. Lack of sleep or poor quality sleep is a recipe for fat gain because the research clearly shows that folks who don’t get enough sleep consume an average of 250 extra calories per day.

That equates to an extra 7000 calories per month and if the 3500 calories per pound of fat is true…which it isn’t exactly accurate, however accurate enough for this example, that’s 2 lbs of fat per month!

Having said that you don’t want to eat a huge meal and go straight to bed 20 minutes later, so I’d recommend you eat 2-3 hours before bed more or less. That way ya won’t wake up with the night sweats because your body is still digesting a bunch of food, but at the same time you won’t be trying to fall asleep hungry because that’s not conducive to quality sleep either.

In general, I think the 2-3 hour rule is pretty effective in general.

The second reason is that quite a few folks find that eating a large meal at breakfast or lunch results in some sluggishness and potentially not being quite as sharp mentally. The fix for that is to keep it slightly lighter food-wise during the day and then have a larger portion at dinner.

If we get sluggish post-dinner that’s actually perfect because we’re going to start winding down for bed in the next little bit and a lot of folks experience better quality sleep by having a solid chunk of carbohydrates closer to bed.

I hope this article shed some light on fat loss as a big picture concept and just how important implementation and adherence to your program is.

Don’t fall into the trap of getting caught up in the minutia and small details that don’t lend themselves to real world results.

The best program is the one you can stick to!