| Nothing like burning fat by giving your fat cells exactly what they need to become bigger during a catabolic state. (READ: Sugar bloats fat, it doesn't burn it.)
Here, some real info:
7. Late Night Snack
I've always been a proponent of nocturnal feedings as one of the most effective ways to arrest night-time catabolism and enhance muscle growth. In fact, the second article I ever wrote deals with this topic: Stop The Catabolic Insanity. Since then, it's been discovered that nocturnal feedings also help many people sleep by alleviating late night and early morning hunger.
If you have a high muscle metabolic rate, which most T-Nation readers do, then your body is burning fuel, and LOTS of it, all of the time. If your body runs out of fuel (which happens to most people every night), then we start to break down muscle, which is made worse by the fact that this process can continue for several hours unabated.
In addition to burning muscle, our body begins to break down fat, which of course is a good thing — within reason. Our most powerful fat loss hormone is epinephrine (aka adrenaline), so it only makes sense that our body uses this stimulant hormone when it needs energy.
Now it's no secret that the last thing you want pumping in your body is a stimulant hormone when trying to sleep. In fact, if you've ever tried a low carb diet, then you may have experienced an earlier than normal awakening, as our body tries to survive starvation by releasing stimulatory epinephrine. Combine that with the hunger cravings and your diet may be set to fail.
By feeding nocturnally, even while on a calorie-restricted diet, we can minimize muscle loss, maximize fat loss, and keep our stimulant hormone levels low. Having a protein-only nocturnal drink helps ensure that this nutrient will be used for energy, with only minimal increases in epinephrine (so we'll still be burning fat).
This will maintain muscle as our most metabolically active tissue, which will help a calorie-restricted diet stay effective for a longer period of time. Of course the enhanced sleep that you may get can help to maintain immunity, which is usually already compromised in a calorie-restricted state, but is exacerbated by sleep deprivation and cortisol.
Bonus Tip: The slightly increased caloric intake may also decrease the amount of cortisol released. As another catabolic hormone, cortisol chews through muscle to provide our body with energy while we're fasted. By feeding our body with protein, we keep fat loss chugging along while minimizing muscle breakdown. Of course protein is the thermogenic nutrient, which may help with fat loss even more!  | 
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