Eating Before Bed: What are the Impacts on Sleep?

Reviewed by Donna Schowntkowski, DC, MS

Cravings, cravings, cravings! They happen all day, every day. For many of us, the greatest struggle is right before bed when we’re more likely to choose the wrong food to eat, leading not only to a restless night of sleep but also to feeling a bit heavier the following morning.

But how does eating before bed affect your sleep? Is eating before bed bad for you? Or do certain foods contain distinct ingredients that can actually contribute to a better night’s sleep and even help suppress hunger and speed up metabolism, leading to loss of weight? In this article, we’ll dive into how eating before bed impacts our sleep, with both the best and worst foods for each goal in mind.

Quick Guide: Sleep Foods Infographic

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Eating Before Bed: The Best and Worst Foods

Some foods are more conducive to better sleep than others depending on the nutrients they contain. The following list of vitamins, minerals, and hormones are some of the main ingredients to look for in foods to help prepare you for a restful slumber:

Main Nutrients That Promote Sleep

Melatonin – Produced by the body’s pineal gland and available in supplement form and select foods, melatonin is the hormone responsible for regulating the sleep-wake cycle and thus integral to sleep.
Magnesium – Commonly regarded by health experts as the “sleep mineral,” magnesium helps slow down the production of adrenaline in the body and acts as a muscle relaxant, which promotes restful sleep.
Calcium – A mineral that accelerates the production of melatonin in the body, a lack of sufficient calcium can cause you to wake up in the middle of the night and experience difficulty falling back to sleep.
Tryptophan – An amino acid found in many foods, tryptophan naturally breaks down when consumed and disperses as serotonin first before converting to melatonin, which ultimately aids sleep.
Vitamin B6 – A nutrient that helps transform tryptophan into melatonin, a lack of sufficient vitamin B6 lowers the amount of serotonin in the body which in turn produces less melatonin, resulting in poorer sleep.
Vitamin D – Among its many important roles, vitamin D may help regulate the body’s circadian rhythm, which, when lacking, can cause sleep interruptions on a regular basis.

Now, before you run to your local grocery and stock up on foods loaded with these essential nutrients for a good night’s sleep, remember that no matter what you eat, consuming too much food right before bedtime isn’t a habit you want to get into.

In fact, medical experts from the Mayo Clinic and National Institutes of Health both advice eating your last meal for the night at least three hours before you intend to go to bed. This gives your body enough time to properly digest your snack or meal without interrupting your sleep pattern.

So eating before bed is not bad per se as long as you know what to eat and when to do it. With that said, let’s take a look at some of the best foods to eat and foods that are bad to eat before bed.

The Best Foods for Getting a Good Night’s Sleep

Almonds

Main Nutrients:

Magnesium; Tryptophan

Apart from producing a calming effect that relaxes your muscles and promotes restful sleep, almonds also increase nutrient absorption and helps fight inflammation.

Avocados

Main Nutrients:

Magnesium; Calcium; Tryptophan; Vitamin B6

Containing a chock full of helpful nutrients that benefit sleep and overall health, this fruit includes more than the recommended daily requirements of magnesium, dietary fiber, vitamin E, potassium, calcium, and vitamin K.

Bananas

Main Nutrients:

Magnesium; Tryptophan

The abundance of sleep-producing and muscle relaxing nutrients make bananas one of the best fruits to help prepare you for sleep.

Cherries or Cherry Juice

Main Nutrients:

Melatonin

One of the few natural food sources of melatonin, cherries are among the best sleep enhancers. Moreover, one of its by-products, the pigment anthocyanin, is also known to aid sleep. Tart cherry juice can also serve as an effective substitute.

Chicken and Turkey

Main Nutrients:

Tryptophan

While turkey is widely touted as the poultry with the most tryptophan, chicken actually contains more according to experts at the American Dietetic Association.

Fatty Fish

Main Nutrients:

Omega-3 and Vitamin D

Fish in general have many health benefits. Oily Fish in particular, like salmon, trout, tuna, sardines and herring are great sources of Omega 3 and Vitamin D, nutrients that play a role in adjusting the levels of serotonin in our bodies. Serotonin then helps regulate our sleep cycle.

Cottage Cheese

Main Nutrients:

Tryptophan

Aside from tryptophan, cottage cheese is loaded with casein protein, which supplies your body with amino acids that contribute to muscle repair throughout the night.

Honey

Main Nutrients:

Melatonin

A food substance produced by bees, honey triggers insulin, which stimulates the release of tryptophan in the brain. This then is converted into serotonin, and eventually melatonin that makes you sleepy. Combining a teaspoon of honey with a soothing herbal tea can be even more effective.

Kiwis

Main Nutrients:

Serotonin

This berry has high antioxidant levels that allow the body to absorb the fruit’s ample amount of serotonin, which can substantially improve sleep quantity and quality.

Milk

Main Nutrients:

Calcium; Tryptophan; Vitamin D

Drinking a glass of warm milk before bed to make you feel sleepy isn’t just an old wives’ tail, it actually works! And it’s entirely due to its rich source of sleep-inducing nutrients.

Sunflower Seeds

Main Nutrients:

Magnesium; Tryptophan; Vitamin B6

Just eating a handful of these seeds daily may be enough to help you doze off at night. What’s more, they’re also known to improve mood disorders such as depression and anxiety.

Whole Grains

Main Nutrients:

Tryptophan; Vitamin B6

Foods made from whole grains like toast are rich in several sleep-inducing nutrients, which helps you relax and relieve anxiety that may prevent you from restful slumber.

Main Food Sources That Inhibit Sleep

Just as certain food ingredients help induce sleepiness, many types of food hinder restful sleep and should be avoided whenever possible:

Alcohol – While this beverage is commonly thought to enhance sleep, any immediate benefits are temporary at best. Since alcohol dehydrates the body, the odds are you’ll wake up one or more times during the night craving water to replenish your system, leading to restless and fragmented sleep.
Caffeinated Foods and Drinks – While coffee, soda, and energy drinks may first spring to mind as sources of caffeine, keep in mind that many foods like protein bars and dark chocolate are also high in caffeine content. It’s good practice to avoid caffeinated foods and drinks every day beginning after lunch as anything later than that may interfere with your sleep pattern at night.
Fatty Foods – Foods high in saturated fat are known to reduce sleep time. The more fatty foods you consume, the more stomach acid your body needs to produce to digest it, leading to a restless night of sleep.
High-Protein Foods – High-protein foods are the hardest for your body to digest. The closer to bedtime you consume these foods, the more your digestive system has to work to break them down, thus compromising the quality of your sleep.
Spicy Foods – Eating spicy foods close to bedtime can lead to digestive issues such as acid reflux, heartburn, and indigestion. While our body normally needs at least three hours to complete a digestion cycle, adding a spicy component to food only extends the process and prolongs restlessness as a result.
Water-Soluble Foods – While many natural diuretic foods might seem like a good, healthy choice for a late-evening snack, they’re anything but. Foods loaded with water mean more frequent trips to the bathroom during the night rather than uninterrupted sleep.
Large Portions of Food – No matter what you choose to eat, eating heavily before bed isn’t a good idea if you expect to sleep through the night peacefully. Like many of the other food sources mentioned that inhibit sleep, an overabundance of food right before bed requires extra time to digest, which can cut into your sleep time.

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The Worst Foods for Getting a Good Night’s Sleep

Celery

Food Type:

Water-Soluble Food

While this “green” food is an excellent source of antioxidants, its high water content means your sleep will likely be interrupted with frequent trips to the bathroom. This results in fewer calories are burned.

Cheeseburgers

Food Type:

Fatty Food

Not only does a high-fat food like a cheeseburger take much longer to digest, it also produces enough stomach acid to cause heartburn or acid reflux in the middle of the night.

Cheese Sauces

Food Type:

Fatty Food

Like most high-fat foods, rich cheese sauces like Alfredo sauce can prolong digestion time. Same goes for comfort foods like macaroni and cheese.

Coffee

Food Type:

Caffeinated Drink

While most people know to stay away from caffeinated coffee before bedtime, many supposed “caffeine-free” coffees actual contain more caffeine than their caffeinated counterparts! So, make sure to read the ingredients beforehand or simply avoid coffee altogether before bed.

Dark Chocolate

Food Type:

Caffeinated Food

Dark chocolate contains serotonin which helps induce sleep but it also includes enough caffeine to offset any good that might come from consuming it before bedtime (as much as one 8 oz. cup of coffee per half bar).

Fancy Water

Food Type:

Caffeinated Drink

Not only do some bottled waters on the market today contain loads of caffeine, they may also include other stimulants that make it even more of a pick-me-up. For example, the guarana extract from Brazil has twice the amount of caffeine than actual coffee beans.

Indian Curry

Food Type:

Spicy Food

When considering spicy foods, few dishes top Indian Curry for its hot seasoning. But the flavorful taste is also often accompanied by heartburn, acid reflux, and even night sweats from elevated blood pressure.

Sodas

Food Type:

Caffeinated Drink

Most sodas don’t measure up to coffee in terms of caffeine content (25-50 milligrams per 12-ounce can versus 100 milligrams per 6-ounce cup) but it’s still enough to wreak havoc on your sleep patterns.

Red Meat

Food Type:

High-Protein Food

While a light source of protein like nut butter is a reasonable snack before bed, heavier sources like sirloin steaks can lead to more sleep disturbances due to indigestion.

Wine

Food Type:

Alcohol

Even though drinking a glass of wine before bed is commonly believed to benefit sleep, it actually hinders it. Wine is more likely to disrupt your sleep cycle after falling asleep due to dehydration and other side effects of wine consumption like snoring.

The Best and Worst Bedtime Foods to Help You Lose Weight

So you’ve decided to lose weight and just as you’re ready to chart a new course, those hunger pangs set in, especially right before bedtime. Then you either eat too much of the wrong thing or starve yourself thinking your noble efforts will speed up the weight reduction process. Sound familiar? Not only do both options result in more restless sleep, they’re also unhealthy strategies to lose weight for long-term success.

To be clear, eating before bed doesn’t necessarily lead to weight gain, despite the common perception. What’s far more relevant are the number of calories consumed throughout the day, not the time of day they’re consumed. So, for example, if you only ate a bagel the entire day but gorged on a 1,500 calorie 3-course meal at dinner, that in and of itself won’t cause you to gain weight.

Now, ideally, you want to eat your heavier meals for breakfast and/or lunch and stick to a light meal for dinner. But what do you do when you get the munchies in the hour or two leading up to sleep? For these occasions, it’s best to eat a healthy bedtime snack of up to 200 calories and to avoid foods abundant in salt or sugar, such as potato chips, chocolate, and ice cream, also known as “trigger foods.”

You may also be tempted to skip the late-evening snack altogether as a way to accelerate your weight decrease, but this can actually have the opposite effect. First, if you go to sleep on an empty stomach, your blood sugar level may become low enough to cause you to wake you up at night. Also, cravings may lead to interrupted sleep which can lower your metabolism significantly and actually make you hungrier than you were before going to bed. Second, experiencing intense hunger can cause you to make unwise food choices in the morning.

Bottom line: It’s okay to have a snack before bedtime if you’re hungry, so long as it helps enhance sleep and doesn’t exceed your calorie count for the day.

Main Food Sources That Promote Losing Weight During Sleep

Tryptophan – An amino acid that synthesizes into serotonin, which in turn produces hormones that have a calming effect on the digestive system, tryptophan ultimately leads to better sleep. And with better sleep comes better metabolism, which contributes to losing weight.
Low-Calorie Foods – Many of these foods can be enough to fill you up and satisfy your hunger pangs without racking up serious calories that cause weight gain overnight.
Low-Sugar Foods – Foods high in sugar spike your blood sugar level to the point where you crave even more sugary or high carbohydrate foods, thus making you more susceptible to weight gain. For this reason, it’s best to stick to low-sugar foods.
Slow-Digesting Protein Foods – As these foods are slower to digest, you’re more likely to feel fuller longer and experience fewer stomach-related issues like bloating and gas, resulting in a better night’s sleep.

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