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Many people think about healthy eating and intensive weight loss, and one of the most popular rules for achieving the goal is not to eat before bed. This is primarily due to two reasons. Firstly, it is unhealthy, since during sleep the digestive processes slow down, fermentation and rotting of food occurs in the stomach, which in the morning can cause bad breath, white coating on the tongue, bloating and heaviness. Secondly, evening biorhythms affect the body in such a way that a person’s productivity decreases, energy consumption decreases, and the breakdown of food into calories occurs much more slowly. The result of the fusion of these two causes is improper absorption of food, a slowdown in metabolism and the deposition of extra pounds on the sides.
Of course, we are not advising you not to eat after 6 p.m. – this trick has been denied many times by doctors and nutritionists. We are talking about a 6-hour ban for those who are used to going to bed steadily at 10 pm. Accordingly, the gap between dinner and going to bed does not exceed 4 hours, the secretion of hydrochloric acid does not increase, insulin in the blood does not increase – hunger does not appear. If you are an “owl” and lead a nocturnal lifestyle, and even actively work with your brain, you can eat at any convenient time. The main thing is that a late dinner should take place 3-4 hours before bedtime.
Today, we’re going to look at 10 ways to avoid extra meals right before bed.
10 Correct dinner
Eating 2-3 hours before bedtime is not only possible, but also necessary, especially when intensive physical or intellectual work is planned. If you take projects home, spend a lot of time at the monitor or read a lot, then the brain needs glucose and calories, that is, energy. Another thing is that it is not worth giving him a “shock dose” that he does not have time to spend. To fuel the mind or muscles, a healthy, light dinner containing complex carbohydrates (mainly vegetables and fruits) and lean proteins (beans, lentils, lean chicken, low-fat yogurt or cottage cheese) is enough. You can even have a light dessert instead of dinner, made with sweeteners based on whole grain flour (buckwheat, rice, oatmeal, etc.).
9. Last meal without spices!
If you do not want to suffer from hunger a couple of hours before bedtime, then do not eat spicy and spicy food at dinner. Spices irritate the gastric mucosa, promoting the secretion of hydrochloric acid. Influencing the delicate walls, it irritates them, causing a feeling of hunger. Spices also speed up metabolism, which provokes an imbalance between the level of insulin and glucose in the blood. Some hot spices also irritate the papillae on the tongue, which are responsible for taste buds. For no reason at all, you may want a specific food – sweets, milk, salty, etc. And then there will be no way out – the brain gives a signal of hunger, which forces you to sadly head towards the refrigerator, scolding yourself what the light is on .
8. Photo on the refrigerator
Many psychologists, fitness trainers and nutritionists advise visualizing your problem. In their opinion, the picture is an effective way of motivation – even more efficient than internal installations. So, you can attach a photo of a slender girl (man) with beautiful abs, which you would like to be equal to. Or you can hang a funny cartoon of a fat woman sitting surrounded by junk food with her face and hands dirty. Or it can be funny motivating inscriptions from the category: “appetite has played out – look at cellulite.” You can also hang a picture with healthy foods that you can eat before bed. This will help you quickly navigate and take really healthy and non-caloric food from the shelf.
7. Walk before bed
Why exercise before bed? The fact is that fresh air and muscle tension help to speed up the metabolism, which will allow you to digest dinner faster, even if it was quite dense. In addition, a good walk tires a person, forcing him to go to bed early, and therefore not feel hungry between 8-11 pm. Another great reason to take a walk before bed is to calm your nerves. We often eat at night precisely because of stress, impressions and emotions, whether they are good or bad. Walking will calm the nervous system and take away the need to seize your excitement.
6. Walk more
If you begin to use stairs instead of the elevator more often, go through several stops on your own two feet, walk in the evenings, then this will affect the figure in the best way. First, as we said above, oxygen and exercise speed up the metabolism, helping to burn calories. Secondly, regular small loads regulate the insulin-glucose relationship, which in the future reduces a strong feeling of hunger in the evening. Thirdly, it is again good for your nervous system and helps to calm it down better than food. If the weather outside is not conducive to walking, you can visit the treadmill or ride an exercise bike or orbit track.
5. Please the body, not the stomach
You can distract yourself from thoughts about food with the help of pleasant procedures for the body. Organize your own personal spa at home: comprehensively care for your skin with various mud masks, patches and gommages; take a contrast shower; relax in a bath with medicinal herbs and essential oils, sea salt; do self-massage of the face to rejuvenate the skin, as well as problem areas to reduce cellulite. It is also very useful to perform an evening yoga complex, controlling breathing, which will allow you to relax the body after a hard day and help you fall asleep as soon as possible.
4. Varied food
Doctors noted that people are more likely to pass on due to the monotony of the diet. Here you put a dimensionless portion of mashed potatoes and two standard cutlets – a classic dinner set. Over a period of time, the stomach stretches and adapts to such volumes, forcing you to follow the habit. And you try to deceive the body and make a varied evening snack from healthy ingredients. Arrange a couple of slices of goat cheese, a fresh pear, a steamed chicken patty, and whole grain toast on a plate. The body sees that there are enough products and feels satisfied, while the volume of this portion is small enough and contains easily digestible healthy products for dinner.
3. Instead of eating herbal tea
There are several reasons to prefer herbal decoction to ordinary tea, coffee, compote, cocoa or another drink. Firstly, natural herbs are great at accelerating the metabolism, promoting fast and comfortable digestion of food, eliminating bloating and providing regular stools. Secondly, the flavor profile of such tea, and even with oatmeal cookies, perfectly saturates the body with energy, imitating a full-fledged snack. And the combination of “cold”, refreshing herbs like eucalyptus, mint and lemon balm interrupts the appetite, which is noticed by doctors.
2. Go to bed early
A very easy way to avoid overdistension of the stomach walls at night is looking. If you want to eat, it’s time to go to bed. The sooner you fall asleep, the faster your metabolism will slow down and the intense secretion of insulin and hydrochloric acid, which provoke a feeling of hunger, will stop. Of course, it is not easy to force yourself to fall asleep at “unscheduled” times. And here a glass of warm skimmed milk with a spoonful of natural honey will help – here you have a hearty snack, proteins to build muscle mass, and a drink to calm the nervous system, allowing you to relax and quickly plunge into the realm of Morpheus.
1. Low fat snack for the night
If all of the above does not suit you, and you fundamentally want to eat when you want and how much you want, then you can at least control your menu. First, if you want to eat right before bedtime, then eat fractionally. For example, they ate an apple, and after half an hour one oatmeal cookie, and after another 40 minutes they drank a glass of kefir. So there is a chance that during wakefulness you will have time to spend most of the calories released. Secondly, snacks should not contain fats and simple carbohydrates at all, be it meat or fish, dairy or sour-milk products, sweets. The optimal snack is vegetables, fruits, bran, muesli, low-fat sour-milk products.
If you want to have a healthy body and a decent figure – keep it. Everything is in your hands, and not one nutritionist or trainer will do your personal work for you. Willpower and a clear goal are key positions in achieving success, so start working on yourself now.