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Here’s a simple trick to reduce holiday weight gain and avoid that food hangover while still enjoying the feast: just finish eating at least 4 hours before bed.
Here’s why: Your body burns calories at a slower rate at night, when it’s dark out and the sleepy hormone melatonin is high. Your body burns calories faster during the day when it’s light out and your wakefulness hormones like adrenaline, noradrenaline, and cortisol are high (McHill 2017). So if you eat too late, you’re going to store more of your food than normal as fat. Whereas, if you finish eating a few hours earlier, you’ll store less and burn more, helping you maintain a healthy weight or even lose weight.
1. After you finish eating for the day, you want to spend about 2-3 hours in bright light so you burn off as much of your meal as possible. This makes it so that your metabolism is running at top speed while your insulin is high and your body is figuring out what to do with all that turkey, mashers and pie.
2. Then, you want to spend about 2 more hours after that in dim light (the darker the better). This will cause your body to make melatonin, a hormone that helps you sleep and heal. That way, you’ll sleep well tonight and repair the damage done to your body during the day. If you use your iPhone before bed, make sure you’ve turned on Night Shift mode and dimmed the display. If you use your computer, get the free program flux.
By not eating late at night, you can easily get in an overnight fast of 12 hours of more. According to most of the randomized clinical control trials that have been done about this, fasting overnight for 12 or more hours helps some people lose weight, decrease inflammation, and improve other markers of metabolic health (Varaday 2014).
So remember, just stop eating at least 4 hours before bed. That means that if you want to go to bed by about 11pm, you should finish eating by 7pm. If your feast is going to last about 3 hours (including the main meal, dessert, seconds, nibbles, etc.), you should start eating by about 4pm.
Much gratitude to all you lovely SDN folk for helping us make our dreams come true!
Happy Thanksgiving!
Here’s why: Your body burns calories at a slower rate at night, when it’s dark out and the sleepy hormone melatonin is high. Your body burns calories faster during the day when it’s light out and your wakefulness hormones like adrenaline, noradrenaline, and cortisol are high (McHill 2017). So if you eat too late, you’re going to store more of your food than normal as fat. Whereas, if you finish eating a few hours earlier, you’ll store less and burn more, helping you maintain a healthy weight or even lose weight.
1. After you finish eating for the day, you want to spend about 2-3 hours in bright light so you burn off as much of your meal as possible. This makes it so that your metabolism is running at top speed while your insulin is high and your body is figuring out what to do with all that turkey, mashers and pie.
2. Then, you want to spend about 2 more hours after that in dim light (the darker the better). This will cause your body to make melatonin, a hormone that helps you sleep and heal. That way, you’ll sleep well tonight and repair the damage done to your body during the day. If you use your iPhone before bed, make sure you’ve turned on Night Shift mode and dimmed the display. If you use your computer, get the free program flux.
By not eating late at night, you can easily get in an overnight fast of 12 hours of more. According to most of the randomized clinical control trials that have been done about this, fasting overnight for 12 or more hours helps some people lose weight, decrease inflammation, and improve other markers of metabolic health (Varaday 2014).
So remember, just stop eating at least 4 hours before bed. That means that if you want to go to bed by about 11pm, you should finish eating by 7pm. If your feast is going to last about 3 hours (including the main meal, dessert, seconds, nibbles, etc.), you should start eating by about 4pm.
Much gratitude to all you lovely SDN folk for helping us make our dreams come true!
Happy Thanksgiving!
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