Originally Posted by
Oracle
Quick question then. I've heard that when you sleep is when your body replenishes the enzymes that it uses to digest more complex components of foods, like certain fats and proteins. A) Is that true? b) if a is true, would that mean that eating food later in the day result in less calories from the food, as less of it gets broken down? and c) you say that the amount of energy burned when awake just seems greater than when asleep because of the amount of time spent awake vs. time spent asleep. Is there an actual difference though in burning calories between a person asleep and a person who is awake, but sedentary?
Just wondering, cause I get mixed answers from whoever I ask, so more sources the better.
If I don't answer something or address something, it's because I don't know the answer. I won't say anything I don't 100% know the answer to because our field is
saturated with false information.
You burn more calories awake than asleep. Living a more sedentary lifestyle, ergo, staying on your couch and sleeping, makes you have a much lower calorie expenditure.
Food doesn't just "disappear" when the clock strikes midnight. I think of food in more of a week long log of things you eat, divide it up by 7, and work with that. It's easier to gauge one's diet over a week long time than over a day. A day "ends" when you sleep.
So some tl;dr stuff:
1) Being asleep burns less calories than being sedentary which burns less calories than being active which burns less calories than cardiovascular activity.
2) If you consume the majority of your calories at night, you need to account for the fact you were going hours without food during the day. Think of that as like negative calories.
3) Other things like nutrient timing, protein synthesizing, the "furnace effect" of eating lots of tiny meals a day, etc. etc. only really needs to be considered if it's your life job to take advantage of every measure as possible.
Like this guy: