Among our motorcaravanning friends, it's a tradition, after we've all enjoyed a barbecue together, to go for a nice bracing walk to explore wherever we happen to be parked up for the weekend. The walk is a chance to see new places, talk with friends - and walk off the calories we've consumed at the barbecue. In addition, the excercise speeds up our metabolisms and allows our bodies to carry on processing our meal rather than allowing the food to settle around our waists and hips.

Why am I telling you all this, when we're talking about late night eating? Well, one thing that late night eating does is make you feel tired and sluggish, so you're more likely to go straight to bed after your meal rather than excercise it off. And the prospect of a walk in the dark isn't all that appealing, even if it is a safe option where you live. As your metabolism slows down at night to prepare you for rest, it's quite likely that, instead of being processed through your digestive system, most of your late night meal will end up adding to your body weight. One late night meal, once in a while, probably won't make a difference, but, if eating late is a regular habit, you could be laying yourself open to unnecessary weight gain.

If you eat your main meal late at night, there's a chance you may snack more during the day to keep your energy levels up, adding to your daily calorie total. And you'll probably have a drink or two with your meal as well. In fact, if you eat your meal at, say, nine o'clock rather than seven o'clock, chances are you will drink more. You're at the end of the day, unwinding, and you don't intend driving or doing any chores or catching up on office work after your meal. So, while you may have had a single glass of wine with your early meal, you'll probably settle on half a bottle or more later. Drink contains calories too, so the wine is adding to the late night consumption. In addition, you may well end up over the recommended alcohol consumption limit, raising more health issues.

Then there is the problem of late night eating causing heartburn and stomach problems, but that's well documented, so I'm just going to mention it here. One advantage of late night eating may be that you don't go for a dessert after your main course. However, as you will probably eat a larger portion and your body won't be burning so much of your meal off for you, I don't think we can consider this to be of any real help in staying trim and healthy.

As with almost everything connected with a healthy lifestyle, it's all a question of balance and moderation. An occasional late meal is fine - it adds to the variety of your life, and that's good. Just don't make a habit of it if you don't want to jeopardise your health.

Learn more about this author, Sandra Piddock.
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