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    Home»DIET & NUTRITION»Carbohydrates Eaten at Night Lead to Enhanced Weight Loss
    DIET & NUTRITION

    Carbohydrates Eaten at Night Lead to Enhanced Weight Loss

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    Every competitor knows that eaten carbs at night is just about the worse thing you can do for weight loss, right? For years, health advocates recommended to eat your biggest carb meal early in the morning and then minimize carbs later in the day. There was some interesting research suggesting that carbohydrates at night may actually lead to fat loss. It may be due to the leptin and insulin connection. Everyone has seen those pudgy rats that are leptin deficient or who don’t produce any leptin; these are otherwise known as “fat bastard” rats. Leptin is secreted from adipose tissue and basically tells the brain stop eating! Leptin “the satiety hormone” has been described as the “information provider” of adipose tissue status to receptors in the brain. It has been shown that leptin deficient have high caloric intake; people who don’t produce leptin have elevated increases in hunger and impaired satiety manifested as severe hunger, however when leptin deficient patients are given leptin, there hunger goes down 2. Reduced leptin that occurs with weight loss acts as a signal of nutritional deprivation, which may be the reason why when bodybuilders go on contest diets they are always hungry! Their body-fat starts dropping and their insulin levels are low throughout the day mostly due to eating less and exercising more. When leptin levels drop, the drop initiates an adaptive response to conserve energy, manifested by increased food intake, decreased energy expenditure and suppression of the reproductive (i.e. testosterone) and other endocrine axes 1. The drop in leptin levels from calorie restriction may also be a signal for reduced testosterone levels that occur when going on a diet. One of the stimulators of leptin levels in insulin, when insulin levels are increased acutely, there is increased energy expenditure, decreased food intake and basically a reversal of all the negative affects of low leptin levels. That why a cheat meal here and there can help the weight loss process by stimulating leptin secretion and keeping your metabolism going.

    Insulin Stimulates Leptin Release

    Several studies have reported a stimulatory effect of insulin on leptin synthesis and/or secretion in man. Insulin is considered to be a potent regulator of leptin, because plasma insulin concentrations decrease during fast and increase after re-feeding in parallel with plasma leptin levels6. Fasting plasma levels in men correlate with leptin levels; in insulin resistant men high insulin levels are associated with increased leptin levels10.

    Its not glucose levels that increase leptin levels, but insulin levels as a previous report indicated that a single insulin injection increased leptin mRNA expression severalfold, independent of glucose concentration11. Several studies using isolated white adipocytes reported that insulin increased leptin secretion7, 8, 9. So when leptin levels start falling it signals a rise in appetite, that’s why rat’s that don’t produce leptin just want to eat all day. Previous studies have described a typical diurnal pattern of leptin secretion that falls during the day from 8 AM to 4 PM hours, reaching its lowest at 1 PM and increases from 4 PM with a peak at 1 am12, 13. Ironically, this crucial hormone responsible for satiety is at its highest levels when individuals are sleeping. Adiponectin is another hormone that plays a role in energy regulation as well as in lipid and carbohydrate metabolism, reducing serum glucose and lipids, improving insulin sensitivity and having an anti-inflammatory effect3. Researchers have previously been reported that you can alter the circadian rhythms of leptin by diet. For example, during Ramadan (fasting during the day and consuming an enriched carbohydrate dinner). These studies have demonstrated that the diurnal pattern of leptin secretion can be changed 4,5.
    So having higher leptin levels during the day is going to keep you hunger better controlled, so the key is to maintain leptin levels while dieting, yet the role of when carbohydrates are consumed and leptin levels has not been studied yet.

    On Low Calorie Diet, Eating Carbs at Night Enhances Fat Loss

    Ok, so back to our study, the researchers from Israel thought that if leptin is high at night from leptin circadian rhythm which rise at night than eating a carbohydrate enriched meal while on a low calorie diet may cause a super spike in insulin that may cause a greater rise in leptin which may lead to reduced appetite throughout the day. The study group consisted of a seventy-eight overweight police officers (BMI >30) were randomly assigned to experimental (carbohydrates eaten mostly at dinner) or control weight loss diets for 6 months. On day 0, 7, 90, and 180 blood samples and hunger scores were collected every 4 hours. The experimental group was prescribed a standard low-calorie diet (20% protein, 30–35% fat, 45–50% carbohydrates, 1,300–1,500 kcal) providing carbohydrates mostly at dinner, whereas the control group received a standard low-calorie diet (20% protein, 30–35% fat, 45–50% carbohydrates, 1,300–1,500 kcal), providing carbohydrates throughout the day. The high carb at dinner group was basically kept on a low carb diet during the day and told to eat the most carbs at dinner.

    The dinner consisted of either:

    Alternative A:
    2–4 pieces of bread/4–8 pieces of reduced calorie bread + 1/2 cup of white cheese/1 slice of yellow cheese/ 2 tablespoons of humus/egg/1/2 a can of tuna fish/4 slices of pastrami + vegetable salad + 1 teaspoon of oil/ tablespoon of tehina/1/4 avocado/1 tablespoon of dressing + fruit/fruit yogurt/diet ice-cream/2 biscuits/1 cookie

    Alternative B:
    1–2 cups of cooked rice/pasta/puree/corn/legumes/1–2 potato/1–2 sweet potato + 1 tablespoon of gravy + boiled vegetables/vegetables salad + 1 teaspoon of
    oil/ tablespoon of tehina/1/4
    avocado/1 tablespoon of
    dressing + fruit yogurt/diet
    ice-cream/2 biscuits/1 cookie

    Both low calorie diet groups lost weight, but here is the shocking results: greater weight loss, abdominal circumference, and body fat mass reductions were observed in the experimental diet where carbs were eaten mostly at dinner in comparison to controls who ate carbs all day long14. Also to further shock people, significant improvements in glucose balance and insulin resistance, lipid profile (total cholesterol, LDL-cholesterol, HDL-cholesterol) and the inflammation markers (CRP, TNF-α, IL-6) were measured in the group that ate most of their carbs late at night! Also, subject’s appetite scores were lower when the subjects consumed most of their carbs later in the evening. The researchers speculated that the favorable increases in weight loss may have been due to the enhances leptin levels that occurred with the high carbs at night groups. Additionally, the carbs at night group had higher Adiponectin levels, which can explain the lower inflammation levels and improvements in insulin and glucose scores. Thus, dietary manipulation in which higher carbs at dinner will maintain higher daytime leptin concentrations during daylight hours in weight loss process may be beneficial.


    1. Ahima RS, Prabakaran D, Mantzoros C, Qu D, Lowell B, Maratos- Flier E et al. Role of leptin in the neuroendocrine response to fasting. Nature 1996;382:250–2.
    2. Farooqi IS, Jebb SA, Langmack G, Lawrence E, Cheetham CH, Prentice AM et al. Effects of recombinant leptin therapy in a child with congenital leptin deficiency. N Engl J Med 1999;341:879– 84.
    3. Chandran M, Phillips SA, Ciaraldi T, Henry RR. Adiponectin: more than just another fat cell hormone? Diabetes Care 2003;26:2442–2450.
    4. Kassab S, Abdul-Ghaffar T, Nagalla DS, Sachdeva U, Nayar U. Interactions between leptin, neuropeptide-Y and insulin with chronic diurnal fasting during Ramadan. Ann Saudi Med 2004;24:345–349.
    5. Bogdan A, Bouchareb B, Touitou Y. Response of circulating leptin to Ramadan daytime fasting: a circadian study. Br J Nutr 2005;93:515–518.
    6. Trayhurn, P., Thomas, M. E., Duncan, J. S., Rayner, D. V. (1995) Effects of fasting and refeeding on ob gene expression in white adipose tissue of lean and obese (ob/ob) mice. FEBS Lett 368,488-490.7.
    7. Hardie, L. J., Guilhot, N., Trayhurn, P. (1996) Regulation of leptin production in cultured mature white adipocytes. Horm. Metab. Res. 28,685-689.8.
    8. Gettys, T. W., Harkness, P. J., Watson, P. M. (1996) The beta 3-adrenergic receptor inhibits insulin-stimulated leptin secretion from isolated rat adipocytes. Endocrinology 137,4054-405.9.
    9. Barr, V. A., Malide, D., Zarnowski, M. J., Taylor, S. I., Cushman, S. W. (1997) Insulin stimulates both leptin secretion and production by rat white adipose tissue. Endocrinology 138,4463-4472.10.
    10. Segal KR, Landt M, Klein S. Relationship between insulin sensitivity and plasma leptin concentration in lean and obese men. Diabetes. 1996 Jul;45(7):988-91.11. Saladin R, De Vos P, Guerre-Millo M, Leturque A, Girard J, Staels B, Auwerx J. Transient increase in obese gene expression after food intake or insulin administration. Nature. 1995 Oct 12;377(6549):527-9.
    11. Coleman RA, Herrmann TS. Nutritional regulation of leptin in humans. Diabetologia 1999;42:639–646.
    12. Yildiz BO, Suchard MA, Wong ML, McCann SM, Licinio J. Alterations in the dynamics of circulating ghrelin, adiponectin, and leptin in human obesity. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 2004;101:10434–10439.
    13. Sofer S, Eliraz A, Kaplan S, Voet H, Fink G, Kima T, Madar Z. Greater Weight Loss and Hormonal Changes After 6 Months Diet With Carbohydrates Eaten Mostly at Dinner. Obesity (Silver Spring). 2011 Apr 7. [Epub ahead of print]

    calorie carbohydrates carbs diet fat Fat loss glucose insulin leptin night
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