1) The idea is that you shouldn't stress your peptic system before going to bed. Eating something easily digestable even right before you sleep poses no problem, in fact it is rather mandatory if you weight train (in order to take advantage of the GH spike).
2) Small meals or one meal doesn't really matter, it depends on what plan makes it easier for you to eat less. Smaller meals throughout the day are preferable if you train with weights, but then again this is of minimal importance if you get adequate protein and are over 20% bodyfat - you won't be losing much muscle mass anyway at these bf levels.
3) One guy eats only at night, another one only in the morning. Assuming they are cloned, if they eat the same calories they'll be losing the same weight. It's true that guy A will be storing calories as fat during his night sleep, but will be burning this fat next morning when guy B will be eating. It all boils down to caloric balance, and the law of the conservation of energy wouldn't allow it any other way.
4) Some artificial sweeteners may metabolize to glucose, but the amounts are ridiculously low. Eating pure protein will raise your glucose much more.
5) The consensus is that artificial sweeteners are safe. From
this article (bold mine):
Despite some rather unscientific assumptions, there is no evidence that aspartame is carcinogenic. Case–control studies showed an elevated relative risk of 1.3 for heavy artificial sweetener use (no specific substances specified) of >1.7 g/day. For new generation sweeteners, it is too early to establish any epidemiological evidence about possible carcinogenic risks. As many artificial sweeteners are combined in today's products, the carcinogenic risk of a single substance is difficult to assess. However, according to the current literature, the possible risk of artificial sweeteners to induce cancer seems to be negligible.
Sturgeon's study has found a slightly elevated bladder cancer risk *for heavy users* (and 1.7g/day is some heavy use), but this isn't surprising: Everything in excess will cause problems, as that same study showed with heavy coffee drinkers.
6) The glycemic index and the insulin spikes are not a good measure of how hungry one will be. No, in fact they are a terrible measure. There has been developed another index for this purpose, the satiety index. By collating the two lists we can see that some foods with high GI also have a surprisingly high SI. And face it: Without supplementing with steroids you are going to be hungry sooner or later. It's pretty much inevitable since leptin will eventually plummet.
7) Lots of things can raise insulin, including protein, sleep deprivation, certain medicines and perhaps even thoughts of food. Does this mean that all these things make you fat ? Elevated insulin by itself means nothing as far as weight control is concerned.
8) From the Anecdotaland, everytime I go below 8% I follow a diet with lots of artificial sweeteners and I eat 75% of my calories after 9 pm.
A calorie is a calorie, no matter when or where you get it (from).
(well, not exactly, but the eccentricities of calorie partitioning are of no use to most people)
