How long do you have dinner or the last meal of the day before you go to the bed and sleep? I haven't been keeping track of this but wonder if it has much health impact or what not.
I believe you can eat quite late and it has no effect. Urban Myth/Old wives tale that it make you fat.
I always think it should be how long after you train rather than how long before you go to bed is what you should be thinking about.
I'd factor in how long it was since my last meal as well. In either case though, I don't believe it's necessary to allow a certain amount of time to elapse from the last meal before going to bed.
I read something or heard something about that recently actually,trying to think where it was. I do struggle to digest a big meal when I get home from training at 9 and can't really eat before training either, so thinking of splitting my meals and getting something more substantial at lunch time.
Timing isn't a big deal. You can eat 2 minutes before bed and be fine. What matters is WHAT you eat. That's VERY important. You DON'T want to have a bunch of fast carbs (complex)/high sugar foods right before bed. Those are the types of food that need to be burned off. You DO want to have slow carbs (simple) though. Slow burning proteins are excellent as well (think cottage cheese/casein protein) Not going to bore you with what the body does while sleeping since pretty much everyone knows that. You need to provide the proper types of fuel for your body to do what it needs to do. This can vary in what your level of activities are and the type of activies.
There is loads of speculation about if you eat this it makes you sleepy or that it makes you hyper and all this jazz. Among these is a study that says if you eat loads of complex carbs you will get fat because by the time it filters into your body you will be asleep - thus it doesn't get used. However the key problem is a heavy meal will get your digestive system going and churning away and for many people this will disturb their sleep and reduce its quality.
I used to try to not eat carbs too late, nowadays my carb intake ranges between low and trace amounts depending on how much fruit I ate.
3-4 hours? add to that pretzels or a humungous bar of dairy milk while i watch mock the week on youtube before sleep and im now starting to wonder how i sleep so easily
I'm the same. On a Wednesday I have BJJ from 6-7.30pm and Judo from 8.30-9.45pm and I don't normally get home till around 10.15pm. So I try to have a proper meal at around 1.30pm, then a snack (usually a pineapple juice and protein shake and a banana) around 4pm and between my classes I have some more pineapple juice and protein and straight after Judo I have a chocolate milk and protein shake followed by a small meal (often sushi) when I get home. I find that if I do this I don't get anywhere near as bad DOMS as I used to and, as I'm not eating a massive stodgy meal late at night, I don't have too much trouble getting to sleep.
I've read that a good time to eat your last meal is about two hours before bed. That way when you start to feel hungry again (when the food exits yor stomach and goes on its merry way) you're already asleep and aren't tempted to have a snack or something before bed. Although that may be more a tip for losing weight (where snacking is often a bad offender) rather than a good recipe for maintaining athletic performance for training.
Isn't it the other way around? (simple = fast burning i.e. sugars, complex = slow burning i.e. pastas, hence why complex take longer to burn, because they're complex )
Oh jeez.....I can't believe I did that....thanks for pointing that out!! Switch the two terms and THAT'S what I meant! Sorry about that! I guess there IS a point to proof reading....:bang::bang::bang::bang:
White flour pasta is fast(ish) carbs. Complex carbs are things like oatmeal, wholewheat, brown rice, beans. Pasta can be made with wholegrain (though the corn or millet and rice kind is less claggy than the wholewheat kind IMO).
