Eating porridge at night.. cardinal sin?

Trotter

As much as I try to avoid it, I constantly get hungry at around 10pm, especially if I've been out running or exercising around 6 or 7pm.

Is it generally ok to have a bowl of porridge with honey around 9:30pm (Bedtime 12am)?

I'm 5'7 and 11 Stone... I'd like to gradually knock it down to 10' 4 so I'm trying to knock out the bad stuff and substitute in decent low fat food. I know eating at night isnt ideal but to keep me away from the fridge, the porridge plan might help.

Thanks!

g'em

There's really nothing wrong with it at all if you've been exercising earlier in the evening. In fact, I had a small bowl of porridge last night at around 8pm and went to bed at 11!

There's this mythical rule that in order to lose fat you have to stop eating carbs after 5pm, but that tends to only apply to those who don't do an awful lot of strenuous exercise - for the more sedentary among us eating carbs alte at night would just give us unused, unwanted extra calories and they would be likely get stored as fat.

But if you train hard in the evening (and by "hard" I guess I really mean resistance/ strength training not cardio), a post workout carb-heavy meal is fine, and even recommended as it'll help replenish muscle glycogen and keep your energy levels up.

mack1

I second the above, if you have been doing heavy training then it's a good thing - but I would also try get some protein in too if that's the case, some eggs or cottage cheese is good.

Trotter

Great.. sounds like a plan.

I'd normally go for a run with some friends for about 40 mins but it'd be a good hard run usually (for my current standard).. Maybe 5 miles.