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Healthy weight loss is dependent on a number of overlapping factors, but one of the most important for seeing success is an effective metabolism. Your metabolism determines how quickly your body can burn through food as fuel, torching fat and making it easier to maintain the necessary calorie deficit for seeing changes within your body. While you can improve the speed of your metabolism through a combination of a balanced diet and frequent exercise, it may suffer from small, seemingly insignificant habits or mistakes you’re making within your eating routine.
In order to optimize your lifestyle for seeing the most significant changes in your body, experts agree there’s one mistake you may be making each night that’s causing weight loss to become an uphill battle.
Snacking before bed
Listen, we get it. You finished dinner several hours ago and suddenly your sweet tooth is acting up right before it’s time to tuck yourself in for the night. Cravings are a perfectly natural part of humanity, and doing away with cravings entirely is not the solution to weight loss. However, regularly snacking on sweets or excessively salty foods before bed may be the one thing standing in your way of reaching your goals.
“When you eat late or right before bed, the calories you take in don't digest properly which results in the calories being stored as fat in the body. Eating late regularly will condition the body to store calories as fat instead of burning them which leads to weight gain,” explains Janiece Stewart, MD of Hōlistik Sports Medicine, LLC.
Eating right before bed might satisfy your residual hunger or desire to snack, but consuming excess calories before you head off to sleep does not allow your body to utilize that food as fuel, making it more likely to be stored as fat over time. It’s also unlikely that the food choices you’re making before bed are particularly healthy, and reaching for calorie rich desserts or treats can only stand to make weight loss more difficult.
“Eating based on daylight cuts your eating window down from about 15 hours to just 12 hours,” explains registered dietitian Trista Best. “Also, the foods that you typically consume after dark when you're just feeling snacky are calorie dense and usually loaded with sugar or refined carbs which tend to lead to belly fat specifically.”
Not only can eating late in the evening have a negative effect on your metabolism, but it may also impact your quality of sleep which can slow weight loss as well. According to Stewart, eating before bed can cause your digestive system to work overtime “which can affect your deep sleep causing restlessness and/or sleeplessness.”
Additionally, she notes, those that eat dinner later in the evening have a tendency of overeating to compensate for hunger, making it difficult to burn off those calories. “Instead, they are converted into fatty acids that increase your risk of having a heart attack or stroke,” Stewart says.
So what is the sweet spot for eating in the evening? Stewart suggests trying for at least two hours before bed. This will offer ample time for digestion while also reducing the time for cravings to pop up and wreak havoc on your plans. “Eating dinner early gives your body more time to stabilize blood sugars, which can play a major role in making you feel less fatigued and less irritable,” she says.
Of course, if you’re hungry before bed you should never ignore that discomfort for the sake of losing weight, but prioritizing healthier options such as veggies and hummus or a piece of fruit can help to limit unnecessary calories before sleep while offering your body the nutrients it needs to thrive.
