1. Eating late keeps you up at night: Research has found that the digestive process can have serious implications on your sleep cycle, causing you to wake up more often, and have a harder time falling asleep in the first place. One of the worst foods that you can eat if you have a hard time falling asleep at night are sugary foods such as cookies and other baked goods. In contrast, chamomile tea or warm milk may actually help you fall asleep at night. Spicy foods also fall on the do not eat late at night list.
2. Late night food isn’t burned off: When you eat during the day, you are relatively active, and your metabolism is functioning rapidly. In contrast, during sleep, your metabolism has slowed quite a bit–and because of this, the food that you have recently eaten will be metabolized and digested at a much slower rate. This contributes to increases in body weight, and possible obesity. The only time you can lose weight is when you are sleeping, that is where you get the results from healthy eating and exercise. Studies tend to show that when food is consumed late at night — anywhere from after dinner to outside a person’s typical sleep/wake cycle — the body is more likely to store those calories as fat and gain weight rather than burn it as energy
3. The Later you eat the unhealthier the food becomes: Its not so much the late night eating that add weights to you. Its the fact that people usually resort to snack foods late at night, such as ice cream, cookies. Adding to the problem, dinner tends to be the largest meal of the day for most Americans, and it’s often made up of heavy processed foods in overly large portions. Your ability to make a healthy choice becomes more and more difficult the later you are awake through the night. Think about what you eat at 1am versus what you eat at 1pm.
Siddiqu “The Personal Trainer” is a CPT, motivational speaker, author of How Are You Fat and Saved?! He is also the Co-creator of the largest bootcamp in Chicago The No Excuse Bootcamp and the exercise series “You Would Think I Invented Sweat” for booking information or more fitness tips visit our NEW WEBSITE www.chicagofit4life.com