Eating before bedtime

itsacarr

I know normally this is considered a big no no but what if you are training day after day? Just curious, I tend to get hungry late at night sometimes and with my schedual im up around midnight quite often. But I also have 2-3 races a week and ride 2-6 hours a day .. Thoughts?

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su22

yeah i agree... sometimes when i've had uni and training and im starved by six-- so i have a 6pm dinner-- i get hungry by 9pm, and if i dont eat i feel really hungry by 11pm.

if im not tired enough to call it bedtime, or dont have to stay up burning the midnight oil, ill duck into the kitchen and let myself eat some fruit. i find that fruit fills me up without much energy. ive heard that it's bad to eat carbs after 6pm (like bread, pasta etc), and the only time you're allowed to eat carbs is after training, when muscle glycogen formation is the greatest.

if that's not enough (often it isnt!) then another good filler are eggs. ill microwave an egg to soft/medium hardness and eat that with some wholeseed mustard-- that's just my way of eating them. and then if that doesnt work, then i grab the milk and have a glass of that, and if im still hungry, ill get out the cereal and have that with milk. (the cereal is probably really bad at this time of night!)

don't go hungry though-- your brain needs glucose to function properly, and if it doesnt have enough glucose (not enough glucose in the blood, and few carb stores left in body), your body won't burn fat cuz that can't make glucose. gluconeogenesis occurs, where protein (your precious muscles!) is broken down to synthesis glucose. good luck and happy eating!

ric_stern/RST

I'm not sure why you think it's a big "no no" to eat late at night. It makes no odds for weight gain (if that's you're thinking). In fact eating late at night is *important* with the amount of reported training that you do -- this will help keep your glycogen levels topped up.

With that sort of volume of training (depending on exactly how often you do 6hrs/day), you'll need 7 - 10 g of carbohydrate per kg of body mass per day (i.e., if you weigh 70 kg / 154 lb, you'll need 490 - 700 grams of carbs per day).

Ric

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itsacarr

Thanks for the input, it helps. I weigh 160 lbs and I do that kind of ride once to every other week, but normally my rides are in the 3 hour range. I guess eating late has always been somewhat of a wives tale if you will.

Adam

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Sucess comes from a progression of failures ...

su22

i think the main thing to worry about is total energy expenditure vs energy input. if you eat more than you've burnt, then you'll store the excess energy as fat. you could be a real Lance Armstrong about it and start weighing out exact portions of pasta and working out how many cals you're taking in each day and spending!!

Renault78law

cottage cheese is a great snack for late night.