Three cups of chocolate milk, a half of honey cake, a leftover pizza slice and dessert usually relieves Abhinav Rastogi of that empty feeling before going to bed. By doubling the amount, he can sometimes dream.
Prashant Gupta and Rohit Ankolekar’s appetite depends solely on their weekly budget. By cutting out a Saturday movie, they can add two chocolate sodas to their usual cupcakes, milk, and Chicken sandwich.
Now just reading this list might have tempted you to go out and have a round of snacks to fill that craving you have at Midnight.
A lot of students are under the impression that eating late at night (i.e., after 8 p.m.) is “bad” and contributes to weight gain. After all, “you’re not burning those calories while you sleep, so anything you eat late at night gets directly stored as fat on you abs, butt, hips, and thighs.” This is NOT necessarily true!
Your body burns calories 24/7. (It’s true that you burn fewer calories when you’re sleeping than when you’re awake, but adequate sleep also helps your body’s biochemistry to maintain optimal weight and not gain weight.) It’s the total amount of calories you eat (vs. burn) in a given day that matters most, not the time of day you eat those calories. In other words, if you eat a dozen donuts (in addition to your usual daily food intake), it doesn’t matter if you eat them at 7:00 in the morning, 3:00 in the afternoon, or 10:00 at night. Any extra calories above what you need, consumed at ANY time of the day, may be stored as body fat.
You need to refuel at least every 4?5 hours. In college, you probably get up later and stay up later than the average person with a 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. work schedule. If dinner was 6?8 p.m. and bedtime is not until 2 a.m. or later, you definitely need to eat again 4 hours or so after dinner (but not too close to bedtime). That late?night snack will not be considered excess food by your body—unless you eat too much over the course of the day.
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