If I stay up late - should I log food before or after midnight?

[Lemonade2468]

Hi

Sometimes I stay up late, far past midnight. While I try not to eat so late it happens occasionally (my boyfriend works nights so he comes home late). I have been wondering do you think it is best to log any food eaten after midnight (whent the Fitbit resets) on the next day (since technically I will have gone to sleep the next day) or the day before? 

I hope my question is clear 🙂

And I would like to respectfully restate that I am aware it is a bad idea to eat so late. Only human.

Thank you!

[Heybales]

First - it's not a bad idea eating late unless it causes you personally to binge and eat way more than your calorie budget allows. If you can factor it in, meal frequency and timing by themselves haven't actually shown in studies to make a difference on weight loss.

Second - my day ends when I go to sleep, for many that is before midnight so it works well.

But I also end up having a planned snack or need to get some more calories in prior to bed, which happens after midnight always, so it goes on the day that had the majority of the hours in line - the prior day.

Midnight is just arbitrary line in sand that happens to fit most people's "day" of waking up to going to sleep.

For some, it's not.

[Lemonade2468]

That was very helpful. Thanks for your thoughts - makes sense!

[joella]

I used to work overnight shifts and logging was a challenge.  Often ate most of my cals before midnight, but if we were busy might not eat anything.

Say you hit your calorie goal for Monday, but Tues. AM,  wanted to eat a snack with BF when he returned from work. log that meal on Tues. If  not met  goal on Monday, place it under Monday's snacks.  In fact, I have been known to log half a meal on one day and the other half the next day, to help balance out a large meal. 

However, as long as it all averages out to what you want to accomplish, it shouldn't matter at all.

[Rosetherese]

Actually I do NOT recommend this for Fitbit calorie counting purposes because, once it hits midnight , the calories you continue to BURN are counted for the NEXT day automatically. So, if you log food eaten after midnight since it’s before bed, it will be an inaccurate input/output result for that day — your output total should include those accrued after midnight. I cannot figure any way to make Fitbit keep counting a day’s calories until you go to BED, vs auto at midnight. So, like other user below, I adjust it based on whether  my day’s caloric goal is met … if it won’t make a difference , I add it to tomorrow since that’s technically more correct . 

[Baltoscott]

I agree with you @Rosetherese. Regardless of when you go to sleep, fitbit calculations are based on calendar days that start at midnight, so the least confusing approach is to log the meal on the calendar day you eat it.