The best time to eat dinner is 3 hours before bedtime, allowing the stomach to properly digest and focus on preparing for sleep when bedtime rolls around the corner. Eating small amounts of foods like complex carbs, fruits, veggies, or a small amount of protein will satiate hunger pains and help you fall asleep faster.
“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.
Foods include: whole-grain bread, pasta, crackers and brown rice. Foods include: peanut butter and nuts such as walnuts, almonds, cashews and pistachios. Foods include: spinach, nuts, seeds, avocados and black beans. Beverages include: warm milk and herbal teas such as chamomile or peppermint.
According to Lauren Popeck, RD, a dietitian at Orlando Health, Greek yogurt is perfect for bedtime, because it contains the sleep-inducing chemical tryptophan. And because it's such a rich source of protein, Greek yogurt can also help you avoid that same glucose spike.
But did you know bananas can also help you sleep? It turns out; this beloved fruit is the perfect sleep aid. It provides several vitamins and minerals that can improve the quality of your sleep. Bananas reduce stress and anxiety, alleviate muscle cramps, and regulate your sleep-wake cycle with serotonin and melatonin.
Drinking water before bed is fine as long as you don't overdo it. Try to get your eight glasses of water a day in well before bedtime. And if you must drink water before bed, try to limit the amount to as little as possible to avoid dry mouth and thirst that interrupts your sleep.
Drink a casein shake
This means your metabolism will be kept active throughout the night, and you'll wake up feeling energetic instead of starving. Casein's fat burning credentials were confirmed in a Dutch study, which discovered a boost in overnight metabolic rate following consumption of the protein.
Artichokes and Asparagus. Like onions and leeks, these green veggies are prebiotic foods that produce acetate, an acid that turns on the fat-burning activity in your cells by helping them recover from inflammation.
… Your two best friends for a restful night. Milk (and other dairy products) are a really good source of tryptophan. It's an amino acid that can help promote sleep, so it can come in particularly handy especially if you're used to tossing and turning before finally getting off to sleep.
Best for better sleep:
An ounce of cheese and a few whole-grain crackers is an excellent choice for a pre-bed nosh. The calcium in cheese helps your body use the tryptophan that's naturally found in dairy to make melatonin, a hormone produced in a tiny gland in the middle of your brain.
Raw and unfiltered honey can hydrate your skin, soothe your throat, help heal wounds and sweeten everything it touches, but it can also help you get a sweet night's sleep. Raw honey, eaten just before bed, helps you snooze in two general ways: It provides easy-to-access fuel for your brain throughout the night.
Yogurt, especially Greek yogurt is a great late night snack that works to promote sleep, but also has many other health benefits. It's packed with important nutrients, such as calcium, B-12, and potassium. In addition, it is also full of probiotics; which are 'good bacteria' that boost digestive health.
Limited fat and protein
At night, that could lead to uncomfortable symptoms like reflux or bloating, so you're better off eating carbs and a little protein, she says. For example, scrambled eggs with a side of fruit, a small salad with nuts and chickpeas, or a piece of chicken and steamed veggies.