5 Food Behaviours to Avoid at Night
5 Food Behaviours to Avoid at Night
Some things on this list are obvious, some may come at a surprise. One thing I want to preface this blog with, if you are weight training effectively and therefore depleting your muscles of glycogen, then coincidentally you need to refuel with food in order to grow. This blog is no way is saying you should not eat a meal at night or close to bed time, because if energetically your metabolic rate is demanding food intake to sustain you and build new material, then you need to eat. In doing so, this will feedback into an even stronger and faster metabolic rate which can eat up stubborn body fat over time. If your weight training session ends at 8pm, you need to eat a meal in order to fuel what was lost from the workout. I would never advise going to bed “fasted”, because that mind-set is more focused on the deficit side of dieting and training vs. the “investment” potential of dieting. Depriving yourself of food is just as detrimental to your goals as the 5 food behaviours I am about to list.
The following 5 behaviours are foods your last meal of the night SHOULD NOT include, especially if your goal is to change your composition, shape of your physique, and have more energy.
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Deep Fried/High Trans Fat/Man Made Foods
Examples:
Chips
Fries
Tempura/Tempura Bits
Wings
Breaded Strips (any breaded then fried foods)
Creamy Sauces mixed with high carbs (grilled cheese, creamy pasta)
Trans Fats are terrible for your overall gut health which will infect your digestion, and when you are not effectively digesting and expelling waste, that will cause bad toxins and unfriendly hormones running through your system. On top of this, Trans Fats and deep fried foods contribute to high cholesterol and the build up of plaque within your blood vessels. Third point, it’s been researched the combination of high fat and high carb (deep fried foods) cause a very strong chemical addiction in your brain making it difficult to cut the habit, which only means your gut health is deteriorating quickly. Heavy and unnatural foods should not be left to be digested, especially when you are sleeping and your body is refuelling.
2. Instant and High Glycogen Carbs
Examples:
Low fiber fruits (grapes, bananas, watermelon, pineapple, mango)
Dried fruits
Juice
Pop
Candy
Cereal
Nutella
Chocolate
Ice Cream
Frozen Yogurt
Flavoured Yogurt
Baked goods/cookies
Rice Cakes (Crispy Minis particularly…sneaky)
Pretzels
Spiking your blood sugar levels before bed and loading your body up with sugar/energy, and yet going into hibernation mode, is not the best way to go about losing fat. Carbs are energy, so they should be eaten in places during your day when you are the most depleted, but never in binge form. If you binge on carbs and there is a lot of sugar left in your blood stream, insulin will pick up the sugars that are left and will transport is to the liver or will be stored as fat. This is why it’s smart to control your portions of carbs, versus cutting them out all together. High glycogen carbs can be enjoyed after activity when your muscles are sponges and starving for glycogen, this way the blood sugar will be used up and very little if any will be stored as fat. But if you are bingeing on foods that quickly spike blood sugar and lots of it, well, then you are asking for unwanted body fat gain especially if you are low lean muscle and already high body fat.
3. Caffeine
Caffeine will interrupt our sleep patterns, which can disrupt proper cell repair. If we work out with the purpose of hypertrophy (which should be our goal 80-90% of the time), then muscle cells need to repair. Repairing muscle cells means muscle fibers are repaired and built stronger. When this works efficiently, then our muscles will grow, and so will our metabolic rate and fat burning capabilities. Cells go through constant turn-over, and sleep is our bodies most precious time to reboot, refresh, and restore. If we are not sleeping well or getting the sleep we need (which is different for everyone), we are not building or burning. If you already do not sleep well, avoid caffeine at all costs before bed.
Caffeine itself may heighten our stress responses very mildly, but lack of sleep is one of the biggest contributors to heightened stress levels. This is the type of stress that is more unconscious and internal. We go about living our day to day lives and our body is the vessel that gets us from A to B. Unless it physically cannot do things, it will do things whether that’s under stress or not. Just because we don’t feel stressed, does not mean our body isn’t. Cortisol is our stress hormone, and this hormone can interfere with the fat burning process significantly. If our body is under stress, then our central nervous system is heightened, our fight or flight may fired up, and we don’t want the hormones most responsible for keeping us alert, alive, and on edge, present during our sleep cycle. This will most definitely disturb your bodies ability to repair and replenish, which means muscle growth will be impeded and weight loss efforts slowed.
4. Alcohol
Alcohol releases a compound called acetaldehyde when metabolized, which then digests further into radical acids. Since this is a foreign and unknown compound, our body tends to focus on metabolizing the unknown by breaking it down and sending it to the liver. Since the focus is shifted on metabolizing alcohol, foods you are eating surrounding alcohol consumption will not be metabolized well. This means your post-bar food binge is more likely converted into body fat and stored, versus burned off for energy. This is why during college or university, people tend to pack on the lbs. since there are a high amount of late nights with an alcohol binge, followed by a food binge with all the foods listed above.
5. Artificial and Highly Processed Food i.e. big box food fast food places
If you are craving unhealthy” food, or at least something more indulgent, always try to look for a “mom and pop”, or privately owned location to eat (or make it yourself). If you want a pizza, look for a restaurant that makes a from-scratch thin crust pizza with healthy oils and fresh toppings. If you want fries, at least look for some that are fresh cut and from a restaurant with high cleaning standards for their deep fryers, as in the oil is changed and filtered frequently. If you are craving a burger, eat from a local restaurant who also sources their meat from local farms. Indulgent doesn’t have to mean dirty or artificial, it will digest a lot better and you won’t feel as bogged down when you eat fresh ingredients and healthier oils.
The higher the traffic and the more stores a corporation has, (such as a McDonalds, Tim Hortons, or Starbucks), usually the higher the preservatives there will be in the food they offer unless the company’s mission is high quality and well sourced ingredients. Usually food establishments with drive-thrus and who serve millions need to cut costs somewhere, quality will be one. P.S. Watch “The Founder” on Netflix.
Sourcing your ingredients from local farms doesn’t break the budget as much as you think, try it for 2 weeks and you may find the pros outweigh any cost increase (if any). Usually meat from local farms tastes a lot better because the animals are normally treated well, have more room to graze, exercise, as well as eat foods from natural sources themselves. A chill cow grazing on grass will translate into tastier meat, versus a cow unfortunately put through a manufacturing process and an assembly line, never really seeing the light of day. The more the average person sources even some of their groceries from local farms, the less mass-manufacturing of animals will happen since demand will decrease. Did you know animals store stress in their fat? Even if you get extra-lean meat you will still have fat in your portion, you don’t want the food you digest coming from a stressed out animal. The healthiest and most joyous farm animal is what you want to eat, the more euphoric the better (no offence, just fact).