Wellness Challenge #7:

Eating Late At Night

| Pajama Set |

Time for another diet challenge! {You can see all the wellness challenges here} This time we are tackling eating late at night. Bassam and I have been doing a lot of home cooked meals lately and while that’s really great, we often don’t end work at an early enough hour to cook dinner and eat at a reasonable time. We tend to eat dinner around 1o or 11pm every night. We’ve been trying to work on getting to bed by midnight and so we usually go to bed pretty soon after we eat or we stay up really late so that we don’t go to bed right away. This is problematic for a few reasons.

Here are the ones that are most concerning to me:

1. Going to bed with a full stomach can lead to disruptive sleep

2. Studies have shown that eating late at night can lead to high blood sugar levels, insulin resistance, and weight gain – even if you aren’t eating more calories than you typically would

3. Sleep time is the body’s chance to rest and rejuvenate, which can help fight off disease in the long term. Going to bed with a full stomach means that the body has to spend that time digesting rather than resting

As for the benefits that interest me most about not eating late at night:

1. There is some interesting research around intermittent fasting and going for a 12 hour window seems the most doable to me, for example, stop eating around 9pm and don’t eat again until 9am

2. When I stay up late at night I often feel peckish and start snacking on foods that aren’t always the healthiest or just unnecessary because I’m not actually hungry. Stopping eating at a certain time would help me break this habit

3. Better sleep hygiene! Sleep is something we need to address during a wellness challenge at some point because it’s such an area of weakness for us. Eating earlier in the day may help us get to sleep earlier at night AND may help us get more restful sleep

4. Studies have shown that not eating late at night can help with reducing heartburn and ingestion. I have stomach ulcers and so I’m always looking for ways to alleviate the symptoms I experience from them

5. Weight control, which is always a nice side benefit

So what’s the goal?

As always we want to make the challenge achievable so that we can actually stick to it for the month and hopefully develop better habits that we will carry with us beyond this month. That’s why we don’t want to pick a time to stop eating that will feel too difficult. The general rule of thumb that wellness experts recommend is to stop eating 3-4 hours before bed. For someone who goes to bed very early, this may seem very difficult. We challenge you to either stop eating 3-4 hours before bed OR stop eating 2 hours earlier than you typically stop eating.

As for us, the time we go to bed can range from 12 – 4am. I want to pick a consistent time to stop eating, so I’m going to aim for 9pm. While this still seems a bit late, it’s not too late considering that the earliest I go to bed is 12am and that this is a 2 hour improvement over when we typically have dinner. This means I want to aim to to start making dinner around 6/7pm that way we are absolutely done eating by 9pm, including snacking.

Ideas for success

Here are some ideas I’m going to implement for succeed at this month’s challenge:

1. Cook dinner according to the time, not when work is done

We tend to have a hard time cooking early because we don’t start cooking until we are starving or we are done with work. Instead of waiting until then, I’m going to establish a time for us to start cooking. I want us to aim for 6pm on days I work from home and 6-7pm on days I don’t work from home. I think we should do this even if we aren’t done working; we can just consider it a break. We can always go back and finish our work after dinner.

2. Have alternatives to snacks

When we eat dinner early, we often get snacky later on during the night. Instead of snacking on food, we can plan to have some herbal tea or sparkling water. Hopefully this will keep us from snacking!

3. Brush your teeth

I hate eating after I’ve brushed my teeth. It ruins the brushing and also food just tastes a little icky after your mouth is minty. I’ll plan to start brushing my teeth at the food cut off time rather than right before going to bed.

4. Change up your activities!

I’ve noticed that watching TV tends to lead to the most snacking for us, but when I read before bed I’m satisifed with a cup of tea. If there are certain activities that trigger you to eat, consider switching them up. We’ve also been wanting to do more relaxing active things together like going to a yoga class or going for a walk. We might actually have time to do these things if we start eating dinner earlier!

5. Remember it’s only for a month!

Knowing I only have to try it for a month really helps me with all of these challenges. I look at it as something I’m just trying and if I hate it, I can go back to not doing it when the month is over. I’m hoping to keep this habit going, but I’m thinking maybe I’ll be more lenient on weekends when this over or snacking on veggies after the cut off time if im truly hungry.

So what do you think? Do you accept this month’s challenge? Chat with us in the comments below or in our Private Facebook Wellness Group. You can also see all the previous wellness challenges here. Would love to hear your tips if not eating late at night is something you are good at!