The promotion of healthy lifestyles contributes to the fact that most people try to follow the basic rules of a healthy lifestyle. Conscious eating, consuming vegetables, and the right fats, whole grains help to improve their health. Exercising regularly will enhance the benefits of proper nutrition. By leading this lifestyle, people should have a healthy weight. But, as it turns out, most Americans are overweight despite trying to live a healthy lifestyle. Scientists have conducted research and found that many Americans like late dinners or snacks at night. This does not mean that eating after 6 pm is strictly forbidden, but eating before going to bed is a bad option. Scientists have proven that it is overeating at night that leads to significant weight gain.
If you are one of those who love to eat late at night, then you need to find the cause of your hunger in the late hours. Perhaps this is one of the reasons you have:
- not eating enough food throughout the day.
- an unbalanced diet throughout the day leads to a lack of nutrients in the body and causes hunger.
- seizing stress and negative emotions.
Despite the reason for your late-night snack, it detrimentally affects your body and health. At night, all of your body’s systems are in a state of rest and repair. When food enters your relaxed gastrointestinal system, it is stressful, and unable to handle this volume of food. Food is not digested properly, is not absorbed into the walls of the small intestine, and in the large intestine, it is exposed to pathogenic microflora, which leads to the formation of toxins. As a result of such snacks, your body starts to work incorrectly, and this is reflected in your well-being. If you like to have a snack at night with foods with simple carbohydrates and sugar, then you provoke the release of insulin, the process of redistribution of sugar in the liver and adipose tissues are disrupted and fat is deposited in the body.
Overeating at night is a serious problem that you can solve on your own or with the help of a professional. To do this, you must change your diet and improve your emotional health.
The real steps to help you cope with night transmission:
- you should eat 5 times per day.
- make your diet balanced with a sufficient amount of proteins, fats and carbohydrates, macro- and micronutrients.
- improve emotional health and strengthen the nervous system: meditation, yoga, walking, singing, sports, and so on.
Despite the harmfulness of nighttime snacks, scientists have found that there is a category of people who will not hurt a late dinner. Please note that dinner must be at least 2 hours before bedtime. People who do not eat breakfast can use a late dinner, the calorie content of which is within the required diet. This means that if you stick to the calories you need, your diet contains proteins, fats, and carbohydrates then a late dinner is appropriate. In this case, you should remember about a calorie deficit if you want to lose those extra pounds. It is enough for you to add an hour of physical activity every day to create such a deficit.
Scientists are also confident that a late dinner should be light and contain foods with a low glycemic index. Eating heavy and fatty foods can cause insulin spikes, affect your sleep quality, and harm your shape.
If you decide to learn how to avoid nighttime snacks, but you constantly break down and going to the refrigerator remains your chronic habit, do not scold yourself. Start to change this situation with small steps. Remove foods from the refrigerator that can harm your health and contribute to weight gain. If the feeling of hunger at night does not allow you to sleep then you can eat something light, for example, a glass of yogurt, a few nuts, a couple of lettuce leaves, vegetables, or half a fruit.
If you realize that you cannot cope with the problem of overeating at night on your own, then you should contact a specialist. As a rule, a nutritionist and psychologist can identify the cause of your behavior and give recommendations on how to correct the situation.
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