No Food 3 Hours Before Sleep

Hey Trippers,

I have six important and effective tenets of good health.  The rules are in no particular order.  I guarantee if you do all six of these rules, you will not only be healthy but will also be built for the future.  You can pick and choose from the rules but you’ll find you won’t be at your optimum.  Do all six and in a matter of a few months you’ll be ready and in shape for meaningful travel.

Here’s the toughest of all the fitness tenets for people to do – especially Westerners.  How does one traveling on their dream trip focus on this one?  In my opinion based on experience and research, I’m saying it’s best for your body and health to do this.  If you can’t do it while traveling, at least do it when at home.  What am I suggesting for tenet # 3?

Do Not Eat Anything Three Hours Before Bed

YES, I MEAN NOTHING.  This is one of the most important tenents.  This one alone would solve the majority of the obesity epidemics.  You see, I too was riding the eating “cycle” – for 35 years.   The eating cycle I refer to is this:

The everlasting circle to obesity

Let’s run down “The Obesity Eating Cycle”, shall we?

Early Morning: No breakfast, maybe coffee.

Mid-morning: Feeling peckish as you finish digesting the meal from the night before, so you grab a snack; candy bar, a bagel, pastry, scone, crisps, or doughnut, and more coffee.

Lunch: You start to feel good, energetic, and lighter.  You grab a burrito, french fries, sandwich, a yogurt w/ granola, or fast food.  You think, “I’m on a roll now.  So, I don’t want to eat anything more until I leave work”.

Early Evening: You’ve worked long hours, eaten light, if at all, maybe have a long commute, and by the time you get home, you are famished!  So, you eat until you’re full.  Thing is, you’re eating much more than you need because your body doesn’t register it’s full until long after you stuffed yourself.

Mid Evening: So, you go to bed, not before a glass of wine, a few beers, or a drink or two to calm yourself down from the demands of a hectic day.

Late Evening: Snack before bed; bowl of ice cream, crisps, cookie, chocolate, piece of cake, or a kebab.

After Midnight: You toss and turn all night as your body struggles to digest the overload.  Acid-reflux anyone?  You take a pill or two to settle things down.

3AM: The alcohol you consumed the previous evening now wakes you up, so it takes a while to get back to sleep – if you do at all.

7AM: You wake up in the morning exhausted; not feeling rested, and continue through the same eating cycle day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year.  And how many pounds have you put on throughout the year(s)?  Suddenly, at middle age you look at yourself naked in the mirror and wonder how your body got this way.  Depressing . . . .

Hey, do I know that you will have trouble not eating anything three hours before bed?  Absolutely!  But, it can and HAS to be done and it all depends on what you do during the rest of the day.  When you sleep, you should not be digesting a big meal, your body should be ready to rest, not churn and burn.  Sleeping is the most efficient time that you burn fat!  How’s that!  Efficient is the key word.  As a percentage, you burn more fat while you sleep for the amount of effort you put in to do it.  When you go to bed with a full stomach, that’s stopped cold.  It takes about a week of focused eating to get you off the poor eating cycle.  And how great you will feel!!!

If you’re used to that bowl of ice cream, kebab, cake, bag of chips, it’ll be HARD to adjust to that empty feeling in your stomach.  You’re used to going to bed with a bowling bowl in there.  Your body will adjust – trust me.  And you’ll feel better for it.

When traveling, it’s especially hard.  Take Spain, traditional (non-tourist) restaurants don’t even open their doors until 9PM.  When in Spain, do as the Spaniards do.  You don’t see an obesity epidemic there.  That’s because they eat late, stay up later, and throw in that afternoon siesta to rest and help recover from the late hours.  But they don’t eat hours before bed like the USA, UK, and other western counties.

So, how do you manage this when you’re on holiday and want to experience the cuisine?

• Eat a quality breakfast (see previous post) of substance.

• Eat regularly throughout the day.

• Eat lunch as your biggest meal – but not too heavy that it will slow you down.

• If on a grueling pace, eat every 2 – 3 hours throughout the day (food bars, nuts, dried fruit).

• Eat a light dinner focusing on share dishes with your traveling companions.  You’ll experience a wider variety of the local foods.

• Lighten up on the alcohol before bed.   It doesn’t mean give it up, just moderate.

One of the most important components of good health is REST.  Why don’t I include it in my plan as an official tenet?  Because when you stop eating 3 hours before bed – YOU WILL GET A GOOD NIGHTS REST.  Your metabolism will focus on resting and healing rather than processing/digesting calories that will mot be burned, just stored as FAT.

Do you think you can take the challenge, even for a week, of not eating a thing three hours before you put your head on the pillow?  If you do this you’ll be thinner, have more energy, feel better about yourself, and be healthier for a meaningful travel experience.

Happy Healthy Tripping,

Carter

Hey Trippers,

One of my tenets of travel is that having proper rest if paramount.  I don’t believe you can have a full day and absorb all the wonders you uncover unless you have a good nights rest.

That’s why quiet accommodation is important.  It’s easy enough to contact your accommodation and make sure they reserve you a room to the back of the hotel, off the busy street.  Just make sure their isn’t a subway line in the back!

Before you even get to your destination, you need your rest.  Which means you have to get it on the plane ride over.  When I lived in London, anyone who came to visit had to endure a tough first day when arriving from overseas.  You need to reset your body clock ASAP to get the most out of your travel you forked out some good money for.  Typically, either you can’t sleep on a noisy plane, you want to enjoy the meal/movies, or there’s only time for a couple hours rest.

Then, you find your way in a strange atmosphere coming at you a hundred miles an hour on a couple hours rest.  The worst mistake you can make is to get to your hotel room and take a nap – further throwing your body clock out of whack.  It could take days to reset and by then your trip is half over!

Alternatively, you could explore the option of taking a sleep medication.  I’m a big fan of zolpidem (generic for Ambien).  It will give you a good 4 to 6 hours sleep and the best part – no hangover.  Drugs in the valium class have a half life of 12 – 24 hours.  So, you drag and feel tired.  Zolpidem has a much shorter half life, so typically you feel awake and refreshed.

Now, fair warning: I do not have a thing to do with any drug company, you should take it under a doctors supervision, there may be side effects, and do NOT take it with alcohol.  Taking it with alcohol is the biggest mistake you can make.  We know friends who first hand have taken zolpidem on a plane with alcohol and then done some bizarre things.

I went to a website to check out the side effects and found testimonials from many – good and bad.  I’d like to share some of the more bizarre ones.  Enjoy: Ambien Testimonials