MIDNIGHT SNACK
Eating THIS before bed helps you burn calories and lose weight WHILE you sleep
Want to shed body fat? Well, you might want to start having a small pre-bed dose of cottage cheese
HAVING a midnight snack is hardly considered a diet-friendly habit.
But it might be if you chow down on cottage cheese, experts say.
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Scientists from Florida State University claim that having a protein-rich snack like cottage cheese may help to up your metabolism.
They've found that eating 30g of protein about 30 minutes before bed may have a positive effect on muscle quality, metabolism and overall health.
And having a late-night cottage cheese hit also doesn't increase body fat.
To test the effect of consuming whole foods rather than synthetic protein shakes or supplements on fat loss and muscle recovery, scientists got a group of active women in their 20s to eat cottage cheese 30 to 60 minutes before bedtime.
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"Until now, we presumed that whole foods would act similarly to the data on supplemental protein, but we had no real evidence," said Associate Professor of Nutrition, Food and Exercise Sciences Michael Ormsbee.
"This is important because it adds to the body of literature that indicates that whole foods work just as well as protein supplementation, and it gives people options for presleep nutrition that go beyond powders and shaker bottles."
While eating protein won't necessarily make you lose weight, it will help to make sure that the weight you are carrying is lean muscle rather than fat.
And that's really what you want; in order to burn more calories, you need to change your body composition so that there's as much lean muscle mass as possible (and no, that won't make you look bulky).
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A few years ago, the Pennington Biomedical Research Centre put 16 healthy adults on three different eight-week high-calorie calorie diet, with 5, 15, and 25 per cent protein macros.
All of the participants were given 40 per cent more calories than they actually needed and they all gained a similar amount of weight.
But those who were on the normal and high protein diets (15 and 25 per cent) stored 45 per cent of the excess calories as muscle...while those on the low protein diet stored a massive 95 per cent of the excess calories as fat.
So that suggests that protein can have a pretty huge impact on your body fat percentage.
How does protein help to kick-start your metabolism?
It reduces your appetite
The main thing about protein as a slimming aid is that it's supposed to reduce your levels of the hunger hormone ghrelin, while boosting appetite-reducing hormones GLP-1, peptide YY and cholecystokinin.
That, in turn, might lead to an automatic calorie reduction.
Protein uses up more calories
It also takes more energy to digest and metabolise protein than other nutrients (called the 'thermic effect of food').
Protein has a much higher thermic effect (20-30 per cent), compared to carbs (5-10 per cent) and fat (0-3 per cent)...so that means that for every 100 calories of protein, only 70 end up as usable calories.
And that thermic effect means that if you're eating a high protein diet, you're burning more calories all the time - including during sleep.
It prevents muscle breakdown
To lose body fat, you need to up muscle mass. Eating protein can help to reduce muscle loss (which often happens when you try to lose weight), which in turn can help to keep your metabolic rate high as you lose body fat.
That's especially effective when you do strength training - so if you are looking to lose body fat, your best bet is to lift heavy and eat lean.
Leading Harley Street Nutritionist Rhiannon Lambert told the Sun that cottage cheese in particular is a good source of protein.
While protein is essential for muscle growth and recovery, which in turn is vital for upping calorie burn, she warns that cottage cheese alone can't boost your metabolism.
The study was conducted on already active young women - suggesting that you have to be already exercising regularly to reap any benefits. As age and activity level affect metabolism speed, it's also not as if the participants were starting with very slugging metabolisms either.
"Each individual is unique and we all metabolise food slightly differently," Rhiannon explained.
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"Body size, age, gender and genes all play key roles in the speed of your metabolism. Muscle cells require more energy to maintain than fat cells, so people with more muscle than fat tend to have a faster metabolism.
"Your metabolism may be partly determined by your genes, although this isn’t yet fully understood. Genes definitely play a role in muscle size and your ability to grow muscles, both of which affect your metabolism."
While following a high protein diet is thought to reduce your hunger hormone (ghrelin) and upping the production of satiety hormones, the interesting thing about this study is how little extra you apparently need.
30g of cottage cheese is a pretty small amount, so it's not as if you need to start knocking back daily steaks to potentially reap the benefit.
The study also suggests that having a late night snack may actually be a help rather than a hindrance, but again, that's probably dependent on how much exercise you're doing during the day.
Your muscles recover when you're asleep - that's when growth hormone gets to work. So having a dose of protein before bed no doubt does help the body recover...but only if you're actually active in general.
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The study's co-author Samantha Leyh, a research dietician with the Air Force, said that while protein supplements "absolutely have their place", more research is needed to find out what role real foods can play in speeding up repair and calorie burn.
"Like the additive and synergistic effects of vitamins and minerals when consumed in whole food forms such as fruits or veggies, perhaps whole food sources may follow suit. While we can't generalise for all whole foods as we have only utilised cottage cheese, this research will hopefully open the door to future studies doing just that."
Prof Ormsbee says that his team are now going to start examining more presleep food options to see what other items might help us to recover from exercise and speed up our energy burn.
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