It’s three hours past dinner and you’re getting ready for bed, when you feel the familiar grumble in your tummy. You’ve been told over and over again that eating before bed will make you fat; that eating before bed provides unnecessary calories; that you shouldn’t eat after 08:00 P.M. Conventional wisdom says that; food will sit in your stomach all night long, which will result in packing on the pounds. Word to the unconventionally wise: Don’t fall for it! These are myths, and not only will eating the right type of bedtime snack not make you fat, it will actually boost your metabolism and a bedtime snack can bring you closer to your weight and overall wellness goals by keeping your blood sugar levels stable. So, don’t push through that hungry feeling and go to bed on an empty stomach, and even if you’re not hungry, it’s still important to eat a snack to reap the health benefits! Although, I would like to advise you to eat soft food and while you do that, make sure you eat 3-4 hours before bed. For example most of the time I couldn’t sleep at night so I usually eat very late especially weekends and sleep very late too.
Eating a snack before bed can promote weight loss. Yup, you read that correctly! We’ve been falsely told that a bedtime snack is simply extra calories. There’s a huge problem with this outdated theory: Weight loss cannot be simplified to an equation of calories in and calories burned. If this were true, you could be drinking all the diet soda and eating all the 100-calorie cookie snack packs you wanted as long as you hit the gym often enough (ugh, I’m feeling sick just thinking about that…but I used to fall for this too. You see, general health and weight loss are about nourishing your body with the nutrients it needs to work best, and keeping your blood sugar levels stable. When you eat the right amounts of the right foods, your blood sugars stabilize and your fat burning hormone, glucagon, can do its job (i.e. burn fat!!). When you skip the bedtime snack, your blood sugar crashes shortly after you fall asleep, and you don’t sleep well and pack on the pounds. So yes, skipping your bedtime snack can actually cause weight gain. And consuming a nicely balanced bedtime snack of popcorn with BUTTER, or apples and almond butter, can promote weight loss. Yep. Butter helps you lose weight. Consider that your Metabolism Boosting.