Going to bed hungry can be safe as long as you're eating a well-balanced diet throughout the day. Avoiding late-night snacks or meals can actually help avoid weight gain and an increased BMI. If you're so hungry that you can't go to bed, you can eat foods that are easy to digest and promote sleep.
“For optimal sleep it's best not to go to bed too hungry or too full,” says Lisa Moskovitz, R.D. On one hand, falling asleep when all you can think about is the pit in your stomach is difficult AF. But eating too late can wreak havoc on your bod.
Many people tend to feel very hungry near bedtime and make them crave more. While going to bed on an empty stomach is not harmful to your health, it can significantly affect the quality of your sleep.
Going to bed hungry can keep insulin low
"When it comes to weight loss, going to bed a little bit hungry can help because it keeps hormones like insulin low, and that can help facilitate weight loss," Davis says. But she reiterates that having a big dinner right before bed has the opposite effect.
“If you are hungry, you should eat something, regardless of the time of day,” says Aimee Takamura, registered dietitian and director of wellness and sustainability at Restaurant Associates. “The act of eating late at night does not affect metabolism or lead to many of the adverse effects you may have heard of.
However, by going to bed on an empty stomach, your blood sugar level may drop, also referred to as hypoglycemia. The condition can be dangerous for people with diabetes and other critical health issues. Even in healthy folks, low blood sugar levels can cause headaches and dizziness and negatively affect sleep.
What Experts Say About Late-Night Snacking. "If you're hungry at night, you should eat something," says Sarah Pflugradt, M.S., RD, a family nutrition expert. "Eating at night will not slow down your metabolism and if you're smart about snacking, you won't gain weight either.
You could gain weight
Even worse, sleeping on an empty stomach could lead to a big food binge in the a.m., peaking your blood sugar to unhealthy levels and throwing your metabolism for a loop for the rest of the day.
While it may be tempting to deprive yourself of food, your body will suffer. After prolonged starvation, your body's metabolism may slow down, your body may not function properly, and your mental health may decline. Though you may lose weight initially, you'll likely gain it back.
Data sources: Gastric emptying is slow during sleep but the REM sleep is associated with faster gastric emptying. During the night we have a more regular intestinal motility than during the day.
Myth or Fact: If you cut down on your food intake, you'll eventually shrink your stomach so you won't be as hungry. Answer: Myth. Once you are an adult, your stomach pretty much remains the same size -- unless you have surgery to intentionally make it smaller.
Being hungry is good for the gut
It varies between people, but between 24 and 48 hours is perfectly normal. If you eat therefore every couple of hours all day long, with the only break being for a few hours overnight, you gut is in a constant state of digestion.
There are many reasons you can gain weight that have nothing to do with food. Sometimes weight gain is easy to figure out. If you've changed your eating habits, added more dessert or processed foods, or have been spending more time on the couch than usual, you can typically blame those reasons if you gain a few pounds.
If you go to bed on an empty stomach, your body will continue to let you know that it needs feeding throughout the night. This can lead to restless or uncomfortable sleep. You don't need to eat much before bed to cure your growling stomach.
Why do so many of us get so fat? the answer appears obvious. “The fundamental cause of obesity and overweight,” the World Health Organization says, “is an energy imbalance between calories consumed and calories expended.” Put simply, we either eat too much or are too sedentary, or both.
In order to fall asleep soundly we need to listen to our bodies and make sure we are giving it the things that it needs to wind down for sleep. Something like feeling hungry - or even stress or anxiety - will inevitably stop us from falling asleep because our bodies aren't in the right conditions to drift off.
So when exactly should you stop eating? Scientists can't agree on a single set time, but the consensus seems to be within three hours before bedtime. So if you go to bed at 11 p.m., don't eat after 8 p.m. Banishing late night snacks after that time could help alleviate the symptoms of acid reflux disease, too.
Bedtime hunger may be an indication that you're not eating enough during the day. As a result, your body may be trying to compensate right before bed by taking in extra energy to make up for what it missed earlier.
Because it is a distensible organ, it normally expands to hold about one litre of food. The stomach of a newborn human baby will only be able to retain about 30 millilitres. The maximum stomach volume in adults is between 2 and 4 litres.
As an adult, your stomach has a capacity of about 2.5 ounces when empty and relaxed. It can expand to hold about 1 quart of food.