Paige Holm, RD

Q: Is it bad to eat late at night?

A: It depends on your current eating habits. If you typically eat several healthy meals and snacks throughout the day, and still find yourself hungry later at night, go ahead and have a snack. Hunger is your body's way of telling you that your blood sugar is low and the food you consume will restore blood sugar and liver glycogen rather than being stored as body fat. If you typically don't eat all day and you are (of course) ravenous late at night, there is a good chance you will consume more calories than are needed by your body at that time. If you are a very lean athlete with "hollow leg syndrome" eating late at night is not a bad thing as long as you also make sure to get calories throughout the day to fuel your sports activities. For the rest of us, the drawback of consistent late night calorie surges is that over time, extra unwanted pounds can creep up. As with all your other meals and snacks, late night snacks should be of the healthy variety.

Q: How many calories do I need?

A: The number of calories your body requires on a daily basis depends on several factors. First, even if you were to lie in bed all day without moving, your body would require calories to do such things as breath and maintain a core body temperature. This is called your resting metabolic rate. When you do get out of bed and move around, your body requires additional calories for what is called the "activities of daily living". As an athlete, you need to also add on calories for your daily training. This can be considerable, particularly when your sport is in season.

While determining individual calorie needs is no easy task, nutritionists typically use equations based on research that do a fairly good job. See the information in italics below if you are interested in determining your own daily calorie needs.

Q: How can I lose a few pounds without sacrificing lean body mass?

A: Theoretically, in an individual with a healthy metabolism (i.e. someone who does not diet frequently), weight loss will occur when energy consumed is less than energy expended. This negative energy balance can be achieved by either eating fewer calories or expending more energy. Naturally, athletes already expend large amounts of energy in the form of exercise. For those athletes who consume enough energy to maintain their current body weight, decreasing intake by 200-300 calories per day should result in slow weight loss. I don't recommend losing more than 1-2 pounds per week because at high rates of weight loss, you risk loosing more of your lean body mass than you bargained for. This can only undermine your further attempts at weight loss not to mention negatively affect performance.

For more information or to determine your calorie needs, please see the handout entitled "How to Lose Weight and Maintain Energy" by Nancy Clark located outside of room 109B in McKale.