What high calorie foods should you avoid eating before bed time? Here are 12 high calorie foods that you should steer clear of at night if you don’t want to put on weight.
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What Not to Eat Before Bedtime
Certain foods can interfere with sleep. Did you know that?
Even if you did, you may get a surprise when you discover some of the worst foods to eat before going to bed are foods that are known to be highly nutritious.
When it comes to interfering with sleep, it’s often not the food that’s bad, it’s the timing.
Furthermore, when you make the wrong food choices, your last meal or snack can cause you additional problems the next day.
If you find it hard to get to sleep or keep waking up in the night, you will likely feel groggy and out of sorts the following morning.
This may make you more prone to start your day with foods that are high in sugar and fat. The kind of foods that are bad for your waistline and your general well-being.
So, which foods do you need to avoid before going to bed? Sadly there are a lot. However, the list below contains some of the worst offenders.
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12 Foods to Avoid Before Bedtime – High Calorie Foods to Avoid at Night
1. Red Meat
Red meat is high in protein so it’s quite hard to digest. Giving your digestive organs difficult tasks to do before going to bed is a recipe for a restless night.
2. Cruciferous Vegetables
Cruciferous vegetables like broccoli and cauliflower are incredibly nutritious and good for the health. Like red meats, they are also very hard to digest.
In this case, the problem is not protein. It’s the profusion of insoluble fiber.
Fiber is great for giving your intestines a workout and promoting intestinal strength, but night time is not the right time to do it so eat your cruciferous vegetables earlier in the day.
3. Pizza
Grabbing a slice of pizza can be an enticing idea after a long and stressful day. Unfortunately, the combination of fatty cheese and tomato sauce (acidic) can interfere with sleep by causing acid reflux.
Pizza is also high in calories. Do you really want to go to bed on a meal that may help you to store extra fat while you are asleep?
4. Cheese
It’s not just the cheese on pizzas that’s bad. It’s best to avoid eating most types of cheese before going to bed.
Apart from being full of protein and fat, cheese is a dairy product. If you have the slightest tolerance issue, whether you know it or not, eating cheese before bedtime may cause inflammation, bloating, or gas.
Perhaps a combination of the three. That’s not good when you are trying to go to sleep.
Some cheeses have the potential to present further problems as well. Aged cheeses, such as Cheddar or Gouda, contain the amino acid tyramine, which stimulates the production of norepinephrine.
Norepinephrine is a neurotransmitter the body releases as part of the fight or flight stress response. An increase in norepinephrine is the last thing you want when it’s time to go to sleep.
5. Fatty Foods (In General)
It’s not just cheese, it’s best to avoid eating any type of fatty food before going to bed.
Burgers, fries, burritos—all of them are bad options to eat towards the end of the day. They can stop you from sleeping and help you become fat.
6. Dark Chocolate
Dark chocolate is healthier than milk chocolate in many ways but it’s still a bad thing to eat when you will soon be going to bed. It contains caffeine. It’s a stimulant that can help keep you awake.
7. Ice Cream
Ice cream is light on the stomach. It tastes good too but don’t go looking for excuses to justify eating at the end of the day.
Ice cream is loaded with sugar and can be very good at making your blood glucose spike. Getting a burst of energy at bedtime is not good timing and there’s a further problem as well.
When blood sugar spikes, your body responds by elevating insulin. This can cause your blood glucose to crash. If it does, you could be kept awake by sudden cravings for more ice cream or other sugary food.
8. Grapefruit
Eating grapefruit is a great way to top-up your levels of Vitamin C, but its a very acidic fruit. Unless you want to be kept awake by acid reflux, you may be better of choosing a banana instead.
9. Tomatoes
Although their acidity is seldom as apparent as that of grapefruit, tomatoes are still quite an acidic fruit. Eating them at night may interfere with sleep.
Tomato sauce presents the same problem and, apart from being acidic, it can be surprisingly high in calories as well.
10. Hot Peppers /Spicy Foods
If you want to spice up your life, that’s fine, but do so during the day.
Although hot peppers and the spicy foods that contain them can be good for boosting metabolism, they can also be detrimental for sleep.
The capsaicin hot peppers contain is the compound that gives them their fire but it’s not something you want hitting your digestive organs when you are trying to sleep.
Apart from having the potential to cause digestive distress, capsaicin also increases thermogenesis. This causes your body temperature to rise, which may make it harder for you to sleep.
11. High-Sugar Cereals
Cereals always used to be a healthy option. These days many of them are loaded with sugar, which can cause your blood glucose to spike.
Cereals like this are not a good option at any time of day but eating them can be especially bad at night.
12. Dried Fruit
Dried fruit is another food you should try to avoid eating before going to bed. It’s too high in fiber and awkward to digest.
The low-water content can make dried fruits doubly hard on the stomach so if you snack on dried fruit before bedtime you may have problems with gas or cramping during the night.
