Why You Shouldn’t Eat Right Before Bed

Whether you like to grab a quick snack before you go to bed or you find yourself waking up in the middle of the night and going to the kitchen to grab a bite, late-night snacks are common for millions of people. It’s normal to have cravings, especially late at night when you see all those fast-food advertisements.

While late-night snacks are a staple for many people, they may be directly linked to poor sleep quality. Do you wake up in the mornings feeling like you’ve barely rested? If so, that late-night trip to the pantry to grab a few potato chips and cookies may be to blame.

When people talk about sleep hygiene, they often talk about investing in quality bedding materials, keeping the room at the right temperature, and other external factors.

However, there are plenty of internal factors that link directly to sleep hygiene, including eating right before you go to bed. If you’ve been wondering about how you can go about improving sleep quality, learn more about why you shouldn’t eat right before bed today.

You may be surprised to find that eating right before bed not only damages your sleep quality but also has some other negative side effects that just make it a bad idea all around.

Diminished Sleep Quality

Let’s start with one of the most obvious reasons to avoid eating before bed. It’s harder for your body to get into a place of deep, quality sleep when it’s trying to digest food. Your body focuses on different tasks depending on what you’re doing and the patterns that you establish for it.

For instance, when you go to bed at a regular time every night, your body starts preparing itself to rest and goes through the standard sleep cycle. However, when you eat right before bed, your body shifts its focus to digesting the food that you’ve consumed.

The digestive process is especially difficult when you eat unhealthy foods that have high sugar content, lots of fat, or caffeine.

When your body tries to break down these unhealthy foods, it’s harder for it to go into “rest mode,” which leaves you feeling unrested when you get up the next morning. In the most extreme cases, this disruption to your sleep quality can lead to insomnia.

Weight Gain

While there’s certainly nothing wrong with enjoying food based on its flavor, it’s important to remember that ultimately, food is fuel that your body needs to complete daily tasks. The calories that you consume are used by the body to provide you with the energy that you need.

When you consume calories and then go to sleep, your body doesn’t do anything to burn those calories. Instead, those calories essentially become dormant, and unused calories lead to weight gain.

This is especially problematic if your late-night snack choices involve unhealthy foods like candy bars, cookies, chips, and cake.

If we’re being honest, that’s the type of thing that most people choose to munch on late at night. If you do need a late-night snack, consider eating something like an apple, a bowl of watermelon, or some carrots and celery. Snacking on low-calorie or calorie-free foods can help you avoid gaining weight while you sleep.

Increased Digestive Issues

As we discussed earlier, food is fuel. With this in mind, your body digests and breaks down the food you eat while you’re active during the day.

When you eat late at night and then go straight to bed, it’s much harder for your body to break down those foods. This leads to a slower digestive process, which overtaxes the parts of your body that make digestion possible.

Many people who snack right before lying down report acid reflux and severe heartburn. This is because your body’s stomach acids are trying to break down foods, but since you’re lying down, it’s harder for them to do so.

For people who constantly deal with issues like acid reflux and GERD, eating right before bed is even more problematic.

In fact, most doctors tell patients who have those chronic issues to avoid eating two to four hours before bed to give their bodies the chance to break down food completely.

The Impact on Hormone Regulation

Many people don’t understand the important role that hormones play in metabolism, which is how your body breaks down food.

For instance, leptin is the hormone that tells your brain that your stomach is full. Ghrelin is the hormone that tells your brain that you’re hungry. Insulin is even technically a hormone, as it controls how the body breaks down food.

When you disrupt these hormones by eating late at night, it can even impact your eating habits the next day because you’re body will struggle to recalibrate.

The hormones that deal with hunger, fullness, and the breakdown of food aren’t the only ones that get thrown out of balance when you eat late at night.

Melatonin is a hormone that regulates sleep. If you already struggle with getting to sleep, your doctor may have encouraged you to pick up some melatonin at your local pharmacy, as it’s readily available over the counter.

When you eat late at night, it slows the release of melatonin, which leads to you struggling to get to sleep when you’re finally ready to call it a day.

Diminished Mental Health

Poor sleep quality and the disruption of natural hormone processes in the body can have a direct, negative impact on your mental health.

Have you ever climbed out of bed in the morning and felt unrested and immediately noticed that you’re grumpier than usual?

That’s because your body is struggling to recalibrate itself. Additionally, poor sleep quality, especially over an extended period of time, is directly linked to increased anxiety symptoms and depression.

The potential mental health issues that stem from eating late at night don’t stop there. Countless studies indicate that there’s a direct link between obesity and mental health issues.

As we’ve already established, eating late at night can lead to weight gain, which means that you may deal with self-esteem issues that have a far-reaching impact on your overall mental health.

Having a consistent eating pattern and a regular sleep pattern protects your mental health and allows you to be the best version of yourself that you can be.

Increased Risk of Cardiovascular Disease

Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the world, and there is a direct link between eating late at night and increased cardiovascular disease. This is especially true if your late-night snacks include foods that are high in saturated fats and those that are high in sugar content.

Obesity, which we’ve already discussed, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol all increase the risk of heart disease, and unhealthy snacks, especially right before bed, make all three more likely.

Cardiovascular disease is also tied to inflammation throughout the body, and poor sleep quality is known to cause that.

If you do need a late-night snack, consider eating fruits or veggies that are high in antioxidants so they can actually reduce your body’s inflammation and won’t lead to an increase in cholesterol, blood sugar, and blood pressure.

Eat Well, Sleep Well

Ultimately, the food that you eat and your sleep quality have a direct impact on every aspect of your life.

By avoiding late-night snacks, or only eating healthy foods before you go to bed, you can get better sleep, improve your mental health, and protect your physical well-being.