Eating Carbs at Night Can Help You Lose Weight

New study challenges old belief

According to researchers, eating carbs at night reduces daytime hunger and helped people lose more weight than going on a traditional low-calorie diet. Upon splitting nearly 80 police officers into two groups and placing them on identical 6-month diets, save for the fact that one group ate the majority of their carbs in the evening, the study found they lost 27 percent more body fat than people on the standard diet, felt 13.7 percent fuller at the end of the study than the beginning, and that the level of inflammatory hormones -- which can lead to heart disease and cancer -- in the nighttime group's blood decreased by 27.8 percent compared to only 5.8 percent in the standard dieters. But Alan Aragon, M.S., Men's Health nutrition advisor, noted the cops' physical activity wasn't tracked. "Studies like this are useful for challenging the old dogma that carbs in the evening make you fat," but so long as you nail your protein, carb, and fat totals by the end of the day, you should time your meals according to personal preference, Aragon said. (Today)

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