Health and Fitness

Dining Late Often? Know the Effects!

effects of dining late

Hectic schedules, working in shifts, long working hours, late night dinner parties or staying up late often may consistently make you familiar to consume your dinner close to bed time or have nibbling habits late night. When we consume majority of our calorie requirement throughout the day and keep our dinner early and light, it helps to promote overall wellness, control of appetite and adequate energy balance. Consuming food in excess quantities at night can affect your health.

Know some of the most commonly caused effects due to late night dinner.

  • Acidity:

This is commonly experienced if you lie down immediately after your late night dinner accompanied by irregular meals throughout the day. It can also happen if food consumed at night is spicy and/or heavy to digest.

  • Weight gain

Research shows that not only calorie intake throughout the day but also the timing of your meal can influence your weight loss success depending upon what you choose to eat. Late night dinner can make you feel full till breakfast leading to skipping breakfast. Eating late can disturb your meal cycle and affect your meal schedule. Also as your metabolism slows down during night, calories obtained from food is usually stored in body as fat and not used up leading to weight gain.

  • Disturbance in sleep

Eating late at night keeps your digestive system working. It can also affect your sleep cycle. Deviations in digestive system can also disturb your sleep by causing untimely excretions.

Apart from these important effects, eating late night dinner can have impact on cognitive behavior, memory and concentration levels. It also negatively affects heart health, sleeping and dreaming pattern. Anxiety and stress is another reason for heavy late night eating leading to its ill effects.

5 simple tips to avoid late night meal and its effects:

  • Eat right: A balanced meal for your dinner can help you to prevent from snacking at night. If you feel more cravings, try to opt for healthier options.
  • Eat at right time: Try to have your meal at least two to three hours before you sleep. It’s a good idea to consume meal before 8.00 pm.
  • Eat light: Consuming easily digestible, less spicy and oily foods at night helps to prevent indigestion, disturbed sleep and acid reflux.
  • Avoid over eating. No matter what time of the day. Do not eat fast. Chew your food well. Take minimum 20 minutes to finish your meal. Once full, stop eating!
  • Exercise: If you indulge in taking extra calories than needed at night, also exercise to burn those!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *


CAPTCHA Image
Reload Image