BigAndy you're making a lot out of nothing. The fact is it doesn't matter when you eat the calories. You don't have to "make up for it". In fact since we start our days off in the morning you should start your fat counting from there. If you need 3000 calories in a 24 hour period to maintain weight, then it's really that simple. Say you wake up every morning at 7am. We'll track daily calories from 7am till 7am the next morning which is what we would consider our "daily" caloric intake.
I would guess most of us are awake for about 16 hours a day, and if you're up longer then you're lacking enough sleep to provide your body the time to recover. At any rate divide 3000 calories into 16 hours, unless you plan on waking up at night and eating. That equals about 188 calories an hour. If you were to eat exactly 188 calories on the hour, every hour you would provide your body with the energy to maintain weight without losing or gaining. Of course energy levels fluctuate during the day so you'd burn more at certain times than others, but you get the picture.
None of us are going to diet like that however so we break our daily calorie alotment into 5-7 meals. For simplicity we'll say 6 meals of 500 calories spread out over the day. You're telling us that if I chose to skip meal number 3 and add those calories to meal number 6, we would expect to gain weight? Well obviously if you skipped meal number 3 then for the time between meal 2 and meal 4 you will not have enough energy and your body would dip into stored energy to compensate. Now when you ate meal number 6 it would be more than your body needed and thus it might store some of those extra calories. However since we burned stored energy earlier, we will store extra energy later and it evens out.
You're saying that you shouldn't have to even things out if you just ate normally. As I said you don't "have" to do anything. When you choose a calorie alotment for the day then you achieve it. If you chose to eat more later and less earlier then there is nothing to make up for as you have still hit your alotment. Even if you ate your last meal while sitting in bed and fell asleep 30 secs after your last bite, it will still even out. Your body can't guess how long it will be until your next meal so if you eat more than it needs it will begin to store it at some point. However you're still sleeping and since you won't get any more food for 8-9 hours, then at some point it will have to start burning that stored energy again. In essence providing you didn't get all of your alotted calories before bed, you do some good fat burning at night while sleeping.
I probably went over board with the explanation but it was clear you didn't see get the simplicity that Par was trying to explain. Calories are calories regardless when you eat them. Personally I get more of my daily calories in the evening due to my workout time. I only eat about half of my calorie alotment before 6pm, then between 5pm and bedtime which is usually about 10-11pm, I get the other half. I eat 2600 calories a day while dieting so that means 1300 of them come after 6pm. Not only do I have a post workout shake, but I have a big meal afterwards followed by a snack not long before bed. Even though I burn less fat at this time due to the influx of calories, I burn more during the day when I'm not eating as much. If I chose to eat less at night then I'd have to eat more during the day to meet my alotment, thus the end result is identical.
And as for your friend who has trouble with his weight. Perhaps his body was simply in starvation mode from the lack of calories during the day. If he was 300 lbs and only ate 2600 calories then that is WAY low for someone his size. I'd guess the reason he was putting on weight is because his metabolism was slowed way down and he wasn't burning enough stored energy for the day. You said he lost weight by eating more food overall. Well that was the key. It didn't matter that he ate less at night, but he was eating more food overall which boosted his metabolism and allowed it to start burning calories again. Not to mention maybe he has insulin issues and the high sweets in general are causing problems, not at the times he ate them.
You use him as an extreme case. No one is advocating eating 80% of your calories before bedtime. We're simply stating the overall daily caloric intake is what's important. If you choose to have your last meal at bedtime rather than 2 hours before, it isn't going to make a difference in total fatloss. Fod god sakes people, eat before you sleep and don't worry what fucking Cosmo or Men's Health says about eating at night. For you that want to put muscle on I'd say eating right before bed is essential so your body has the raw materials to work with while you sleep. Go to bed with an empty stomach and your muscles will starve all night.
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