Surely there are many of us who have a friend or acquaintance who claims to have lost weight simply by skipping dinner. Science, however, does not seem too supportive of incorporating this habit if the goal is to lose weight. According to research published in the journal Nutrients, people who do not eat food at night gain more weight than those who do. Specifically, according to the exhaustive follow-up carried out for six years on various volunteers prone to being overweight, those who skipped dinner increased their weight by 10% compared to those who did not, who remained stable.

Thus, even in the midst of trends such as intermittent fasting (consisting of going up to 16 hours in a row without eating anything), science still has not shown that eliminating the last meal of the day is really effective when it comes to losing weight or losing weight. to be healthy. A research review published in the British Journal of Nutrition supports this theory and concludes that there is insufficient evidence to support that eating little dinner helps to lose weight. In fact, the study indicates that a healthy dinner, free of fat and rich in protein and vegetables, can be of great help to prevent the loss of lean mass during the night.

Therefore, although it cannot be lightly recommended not to eat dinner (neither to lose weight nor to gain health), the truth is that it should not be mandatory to do so, since there are certain cases in which not eating dinner could perfectly be part of a healthy diet. The dietitian-nutritionist and cook Mónica Barreal explains it: “No daily intake is strictly mandatory, since we do not stop being animals that have our own integrated mechanisms capable of regulating hunger and satiety. Going to the extreme: an infant is capable of expressing when she feels hungry and is fed when she expresses it. Therefore, if we eat an adequate diet that respects our hunger and satiety cycles and when night falls we do not feel hungry, the answer to whether we should force ourselves to eat dinner is no, since the body is not asking us to. This simply means that we don’t need it.”

However, the current pace of life makes us live disconnected from the body and the signals it gives us throughout the day, so that at times we may not know how to distinguish the feeling of hunger or confuse it with other stimuli. “The fact of having established schedules and obligations throughout the day means that in many cases we cannot eat when we are hungry, so we are forced to design eating guidelines that are compatible with our routines,” explains, for his part, the expert coach in healthy habits Natàlia Calvet.

The expert declares herself in favor of intermittent fasting in certain cases and as long as it is part of a perfectly designed plan, which includes the intake of all the necessary nutrients throughout the day. This consists, roughly, of condensing the total daily food intake into 8 hours and fasting for 16 (the guideline can be reduced to 12/12). To achieve an effective fast, most people eat dinner very early (making it more of a snack) or eliminate it altogether. “If we opt for a food plan that includes fasting, we must make sure that it is controlled by a nutrition professional and that the necessary nutrients are included during the hours of intake,” explains dietitian-nutritionist Marta Moreno from Nutrición Clinic. .

This is not always easy, since it is common for us to end up making a series of mistakes when we skip dinner. “It is likely that without realizing it we are failing to consume the amount of nutrients we need, especially vitamins and proteins. This happens because in general it is more difficult for us to include proteins and vegetables at breakfast, a time of day when we tend to throw away carbohydrates. In addition, we should also make sure that lunch includes a larger portion of these nutrients to compensate for those that we are going to stop consuming at dinner”, says Calvet.

Another problem that skipping dinner can cause is, according to Barreal, giving rise to late-night binge eating. Thus, those people who skip dinner in the hope of consuming fewer calories may wake up hungry at dawn, a time when all the ingredients come together so that decision-making is not appropriate. “It may happen that we do not have dinner because the brain has prioritized other issues, which happens when we are very busy. It is when ghrelin is activated, a hormone that transmits the sensation of hunger to our brain”, explains the dietitian-nutritionist. This can cause us to wake up hungry at dawn, open the fridge and make food choices that are not the healthiest, “since no one wants to chew on a stalk of celery at two in the morning”. The body usually asks for –continues Barreal– “foods that are easy to swallow and chew, such as muffins, buns soaked in milk and other hyperpalatable options, rich in flour, fat, salt and sugar, which we will also end up consuming voraciously”.

Therefore, there are many nutritionists who are not entirely in favor of skipping dinner, except on special occasions, such as after a copious lunch. This is the case of the doctor and nutritionist Núria Monfulleda, from the Loveyourself center in Barcelona. “Having a healthy weight has nothing to do with having dinner or not having dinner, but with consuming a certain number of calories throughout the day. If we eat adequate calories to lose weight, we will lose weight whether we eat dinner or not. And vice versa: we can skip dinner and gain weight, consuming more calories than necessary. Having said this, personally I prefer to schedule dinner, since when we don’t we tend to drag more hunger, which we end up compensating without realizing it the next day by consuming denser foods”, explains the doctor and nutritionist, who insists on something that is often forgets us when we want to lose weight: “Losing weight should not be in any case a constant fight with the body, but a calm process that implies eating what it touches, when it touches and a few times a day so that the body does not have a feeling of deprivation ”.

The nutritionist Susana León has the same opinion, who considers that there are numerous arguments in favor of having dinner. “It is not about forcing ourselves to have dinner or a snack if we are not hungry, simply trying to design eating plans that include a light and healthy dinner, which will allow us to keep glucose levels stable, so that our energy also supports it. will be throughout the day. This will make it easier for us to stay active both physically and mentally,” she says.

So, keeping dinner seems like a good idea in all aspects, except if we are one of those who dine very late or opt for unhealthy foods, something more common than it should be. “Dinner is usually the time of day when we order fast food or make ourselves a sandwich anyway. We tend to be monotonous and choose unhealthy options when we could prepare a wide variety of foods, like at lunch,” Moreno considers. The nutritionist also explains that it is important to adjust the intake to the activity carried out during the day, since, otherwise, we will gain weight.

Lastly, María Merino, dietitian-nutritionist and director of the Comiendo con María page, reminds us that it is not advisable to eat late for dinner. “In Spain we usually have dinner between 10 pm and 11 pm and go to bed just an hour later, so we don’t have time to digest. If on top of that we choose very heavy options, the quality of sleep is conditioned, which can end up affecting the quality of life ”.

In this sense, Barreal recommends trying to eat dinner about 4 hours before going to sleep and, if just before going to bed you feel a little hungry, “bet on foods rich in tryptophan and melatonin, which help us fall asleep and rest well. A glass of hot milk, cereals like rice or oatmeal, or just a few nuts will keep us full at night,” he says. This will, in turn, make us opt for a sensible breakfast and that our decisions throughout the day will also be the right ones.