Dinner 3 hours before bed

Eating late at night can make you sleep poorly. I find it difficult to wake up in the morning, and I have no appetite when I wake up. It can become a vicious cycle of skipping breakfast and eating more dinner. Sleep time decreases, which can lead to obesity.

1. Don't have a midnight snack right before bed.

If you eat your evening meal too close to bedtime, your body temperature will not cool down easily and you will not sleep well. It takes several hours for your body to digest food, so it's best to eat dinner at least three hours before you go to sleep. Eating a late night snack right before bed keeps your digestive system active while you sleep. Foods that are particularly high in protein and fat are slow to digest and can put a strain on your stomach and intestines.

If I have a late dinner, I'll stay up late and end up eating. This will cause you to wake up late the next morning, leaving you with no time to eat breakfast . If you don't eat breakfast, you'll eat more dinner to compensate. Be careful of this vicious cycle.

2. Eating late at night is a cause of obesity.

There is a protein called BMAL1 that regulates biological rhythms, and when there is a lot of it, it becomes easier to store fat in cells. BMAL1 is thought to be low in the body during the day and increases at night. It seems that the time between 10pm and 2am is about 20 times as high as at 3pm. Even if you eat the same amount, eating late at night can make you more likely to become obese.

However, if you are too hungry, you will become irritated and unable to sleep. In such cases, it would be a good idea to eat a small amount of easily digestible carbohydrates such as udon, soba, or rice porridge before going to sleep.

3. If you sleep too little, you're more likely to gain weight.

You are also more likely to gain weight if you sleep less. This is due to an imbalance in the hormones that control appetite. Appetite increases when a hormone called ghrelin increases, and decreases when a hormone called leptin increases.

According to a study by Stanford University, people who sleep 5 hours a day have 14.9% more ghrelin and 15.5 % less leptin compared to people who sleep 8 hours a night.

A Columbia University study backs this up, reporting that short sleep times can lead to obesity. People who spend less than 6 hours a day have a 23 % higher obesity rate than people who spend 7 to 9 hours a day. It is said that 50 % of people are obese if they sleep for 5 hours, and 73 % if they sleep for less than 4 hours.

Related article: List of lifestyle habits that lead to good sleep

Benefits of eating breakfast