For Weight Loss, Cut Carbs in PM?

My husband and I are trying to lose some weight – he more than I, I’m just trying to lose about 8 pounds and get back into my personal comfortable weight zone.  We ran into a wall though lately, and I think the reason that we hit that wall was that we are eating too many carbohydrates in the afternoon – or for dinner, and that is what is causing our immovable plateau.

We are following a simple calorie and fat restriction diet, restricting our calories to around 1500-1600 per day, and that seemed to work great for the first few pounds to come off. However, we noticed that we leveled off for several days, and I’m not attributing that to our consumption of high carb Lean Cuisine meals for dinner.

We do combine them with a large side salad, just so that they are  more filling, but the fact that these Lean Cuisines have things like rice and pasta in them, although they are still low calorie, they are piling in the carbs before bed time.

This is probably the problem, since we don’t burn off carbs in our sleep really, they are just left there to convert to fat, so what we are trying to break through to our next weight loss goal is to cut out the carbs for dinner, unless they are carbs that came from a vegetable or fruit.

This way, we’re not going to bed and sleeping with carbs still in our system, such as rice and pasta, and our bodies can more effectively burn the fat and calories off since the carbs don’t provide that instant energy that calories usually go to.

Calories are energy, especially when it comes to calories garnered from carbohydrates, and when you go to bed after dinner, it makes sense that those “instant energy” carbs may have a hard time getting burned off when the only physical activity you’re doing involves dreaming and snoring!

Carb blockers may help to bind and release some of these carbs from the body, but it’s still a good idea to keep your carb consumption to the day time when you have plenty of the day still ahead of you to burn them off before they get the chance to convert into fat and extra weight.