Sleeping and eating, eating and sleeping

In keeping with our non-technical theme here, let's talk about when to eat and when to wait.

I'm a firm believer in eating when one is hungry. The habit of having a little something frequently during the day keeps your body and your mind going. Fasting is the worst thing you can do. Your body goes into panic mode because it is expecting food, wants food, isn't getting food, so figures it better switch over to shut-down mode because it doesn't know when food is coming. This is counter productive. We want to keep all pistons firing during the day and park for sleeping at night.

That said, you can apply some smarts and some self-restraint when deciding what you eat at what time. A large meal right before bed is going to inhibit digestion, make you feel lousy and disrupt your sleep. Your body wants you to move around after eating, keep that blood flow up, help dissipate those nutrients from your stomach to those outer reaches. Going to bed a number of hours after eating will let your body concentrate on the task at hand (sleeping) and not digestion.

Another trick I have learned over the years is to have my high-calorie treats earlier in the day rather than last thing at night. I, personally, have very little self discipline so denying myself foods I want just makes me grouchy. I remember seeing an interview with Victoria Beckham and she was asked how she maintains her beautiful figure. I'm sure she said other things but what I remember her saying is that she never ate cookies. Two things came to mind when I heard that; she's either very self-disciplined or she does not have a sweet tooth. Hats off to her regardless.

I have a sweet tooth. I grew up in a household where there had to be dessert every night because Dad had a few sweet tooth's and a meal without dessert was a disaster. In my own household, the thought of not having sweets or desserts around is, well, unthinkable. Through trial and error, I have learned that eating 1/4 of a chocolate cake at 9pm will guarantee I'll still be awake at 2 in the morning but having cake with my coffee in the afternoon and I'll sleep like a baby.

So practice some smarts if you can. Don't eat a lot just before going to bed and move your high-calorie treats to earlier in the day. You really can have your cake and eat it too.