Eating before bed is a common concern I often see on message boards. Although I usually don’t worry about when I eat, it does make me curious about what happens if you eat a big meal right before bedtime. Does your metabolism slow down while you sleep, causing the food to turn into body fat?
And I don’t know about you, but sometimes I have pretty wild dreams. Are these dreams related to what I eat at night? Like how Ebenezer Scrooge was haunted by ghosts and blamed it on undigested food, can what we eat really affect our dreams? Let’s delve into what actually happens when you eat before going to sleep.
First off, there isn’t any solid scientific evidence that shows eating before bed causes weight gain in people who are of normal weight. What really matters is the total amount of calories you consume throughout the day. Even a small snack eaten 30 minutes before bed will be digested without causing significant weight gain, a fear many people have.
Registered dietitian Sarah Remmer has said that night eating causing weight gain is a myth. It’s all about how many calories you consume in a day, not when you eat them. So, as long as you stay within your daily calorie limit, eating before bed won’t make you gain weight. In fact, a healthy snack before bed is better than going to sleep hungry, which can cause stomach pains and lead to a restless night.
The problem with late-night snacking is more about the types of food we tend to crave. These “midnight snacks” are often not the healthiest options. Most of the time, we’re not reaching for a bowl of steamed broccoli. We crave comfort foods that we think help us sleep better, but these choices can easily add up to a lot of extra calories and lead to weight gain.
Eating a salad before bed might not cause weight issues, but large meals can lead to other health problems. Eating at night can cause bloating, insomnia, and heartburn, all of which can lower the quality of your sleep and, by extension, your overall quality of life. If you’re not getting at least 6.5 hours of sleep because of nighttime eating, this has been linked to higher body fat percentages.
This might be because not sleeping enough increases levels of an appetite-stimulating substance in our bodies, which can make you eat more the next day. Additionally, it seems Scrooge was onto something. Eating spicy foods or anything that upsets your stomach before bed can lead to restless sleep and vivid dreams because you’re more likely to wake up and remember them.
Dr. Ware, Chief of the Division of Sleep Medicine at Eastern Virginia Medical School, explained that you need to wake up within five minutes of having a dream to remember it. So while food might not make your dreams crazier, it could make it more likely that you’ll remember them. More research is