Eating before sleeping

Yes, it's a hard habit for me to break. I know it's bad and the body doesn't burn the fat you consume right before sleeping, but exactly how bad is it? How long should I wait to sleep before eating something, like say a tuna and miracle whip light sandwich? And other such similar questions.

This isn't gospel but here is my rule of thumb. I allow myself to eat late at night "only" if I just finished a hard workout as your body is still burning calories for hours afterwards. If I am inactive then I won't eat anything past 9:00 PM, keeping in mind most days I don't go to bed before 1:00 AM ... and probably 4:00 to 5:00 AM on weekends. If I "cheat" and break this rule of mine then I know I will have to work hard the next day to burn it off otherwise overtime that will add up.

The more active you are the better you can get away with it. The younger you are the more you can get a way with this. Younger and active ... even better. But the older you are and the less active then you have to watch things more. As you get older your metabolism slows down and if your activity level goes down as well, then you are asking for trouble.

Again this is only my personal opinions. I have read some things that I base some of this on but I can't substantiate it at this time. But at night we are less active and most times when you get those hunger pains, it is merely your body telling you it is thirsty as it cannot substantiate hunger and thirst pains. And many times you are hungry because mentally you think you are hungry ... or emotionally you think you are hungry ... or you just want to eat just for the heck of it.

Little things we do now start patterns and those patterns can lead to problems later in the future.

Dereck, you say you don't eat anything after 9pm - when do you go to bed?

Week nights 1:00 AM usually and weekends 4:00 to 5:00 AM. Week days I'm up at 6:50 AM and weekends around 9:00 AM.

Wow... that's incredible. I don't know how you do that....

Personally, I need to have a full meal about every 3 hours.... either that or a really big snack a few times within those three hours. I can't imagine going to bed 4... or 8 hours after my last meal... After 16 hours without food (assuming 8 hours of sleep), My stomach would be burning with hunger... and I definitely could not sleep.

Late nights I'm fairly inactive so there is no need to eat anything as if I did it would probably just get stored as fat. However I won't lie to you, weekend late nights my stomach does growl but I usually try to curb that with drinking water ... or an occasional cheat.

Normally I eat at 7:15 AM, 10:00 AM, 12:00 PM, 2:30 PM, 6:00 PM and 9:00 PM. I have curbed this a bit as I am not as active as I usually am due to ACL surgery 12 weeks ago and did not want to take in that much calories that I knew I couldn't burn off. Now that I am focusing on a body building routine I will be again looking at upping my calorie intake especially proteins. I will of course be doing this slowly so that my body can adjust and so that I'm not wasting anything or storing too much too early. Then once back to TKD/BJJ then I will curb this down again to meet the needs of my body for this training.

I've found for myself that if I'm not active, plus being 38 years old, that my metabolism only works when very active and when not then I have the ability to gain unwanted weight. This is one of the reason why when inactive at night that eating something doesn't make too much sense for me because I won't be burning it off sitting around watching TV or playing my 360.

ahh, I understand. Call me crazy, but I'm kind of looking forward to the day that my metabolism slows down.

My metabolism works whether I'm active or not. Sometimes I swear I burn more calories sleeping than others do running. I actually make it a point to put something in my stomach before going to bed; if not, I wake up hungry in the middle of the night.

Having to eat so much, so frequently, really gets in the way of things at times.

Dereck, do you also suffer from delayed sleep phase syndrome?

I can't sleep until 03:00 at night, no matter what day it is. On normal days, I'll wake up around 08:00, on weekends around 10:00-11:00 to make up for the days I wake up early.

Have to agree, I get hungry sometimes at night, but I don't eat. The best way to prevent eating, is to have nothing in the fridge.

-Taison out

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Dereck, do you also suffer from delayed sleep phase syndrome?

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Not sure what this is but I'm sure I've got it.

The thing for me is my brain does not shut off and I think is one of my problems. Even if I go to bed early when I'm tired or ill I will still be awake in bed until the wee hours of the morning. Even if I try to think of nothing it makes no difference. And when sleeping it is never a deep sleep as any little noise or movement will wake me up most times. And regardless I wake to flip my pillow to the cooler side or change body positions, go to the bathroom or what have you. I'm finding as I'm getting older sometimes things are better but certainly other times they are worse. 3 to 4 hours of sleep a night and I'm good to go plus the odd nap for 15 minutes after supper. And I don't need an alarm clock as I'm awake before it goes off; though I use one to be on the safe side.

Not to mention that sometimes my heart beats so hard that it wakes me up and in fact my wife has felt it before. And I believe like my mother, my heart sometimes stops for a second or so and then starts up ... and is probably the reason it wakes me up and is beating so hard.