Diet Deception: The After Six Diet

The Premise: 

Not eating after 6 p.m. so that by the time you sleep, most of the body’s intake would have already been converted to energy and used up, efficiently eliminating the chances of stocking up excess calories that might turn into fat.

The Promise: Weight Loss

The Proof: 

Kathy, 26, a former national athlete said “As an athlete, I’ve never had to diet extensively. But when I got married and gave birth, it was much harder. I did the After-six diet for two months and was amazed to find that I fit in my old clothes again. You just have to have the discipline to do it.”

The Prognosis: 

The After-six diet is more of a health tip than a diet. Its two main goals are to create an eating cut-off so you take in fewer calories for the lesser amount of activities ahead of you which is sleeping; and to promote the habit of eating breakfast. We continuously burn calories every second of our lives. Logically, you burn more calories running than sleeping, although you still burn calories even when you snooze. Also, the digestive ability of the body is more efficient when you’re awake. Before your food turns into energy, the body has to transform it to useable forms of energy. By eating way before bedtime, you ensure that the food has been digested and can efficiently be used by the body during slumber.

The theory is almost sound until you figure out what exactly your bedtime is. It takes approximately four hours before the body reacts to the lack of nutrients and you start feeling hunger pangs. After two hours of digesting, your body is efficiently burning calories and by the end of the fourth hour, your stomach produces enzymes for digestion for the food, which it is supposedly scheduled to admit. But what if you sleep at midnight? Two hours would have gone by then and the enzymes in your stomach would have reacted to your stomach lining resulting to ulcers and acid build-up.

The Pros’ Position:

“If you’re not an early sleeper, don’t do it. You can develop ulcers and hyperacidity by not eating way past four hours consistently. The concept of an eating cut-off time can work only if you take into consideration your normal sleeping patterns. If you sleep at midnight, make your cut-off 8p.m. or even 9p.m. instead of 6p.m. remember, hunger is just the body’s way of conveying that it needs nourishment. Deprivation is not the key to good health. Just make sure you eat two to three hours before you sleep. That should be sufficient. Never sleep straight away after eating”, says Ana Cruz, an L.A. nutritionist and dietician who once worked for the Duke University Medical Center.

On the other hand, some nutritionists believe that this is another fad formula which they discourage because of its erroneous and unscientific reasoning. This is because the body’s basal metabolism works 24 hours and does its different functions regardless of the time you feed it. 

The bottom line is: The key to healthy and scientific weight loss and weight maintenance program has no easy formula. Healthy lifestyle changes, good food choices, sustained and regular physical activity, attitudinal and behavioral modification will give us a healthier body.