This idea comes into my office everyday! You hear about it all the time on tv, in books in the latest diet manual…”You must NOT eat after ___o’clock!” “ Your body will not burn that food!” “You will gain weight!!!” Your body does NOT shut down while you are sleeping. If that is the case your kidneys would stop filtering your blood, your pancreas would stop producing insulin, your lungs would stop breathing and your heart you stop beating! We know this isn’t happening, since you wake up each morning. Your body functioned thru the night! So, just as your body is keeping your vital organs moving and grooving it is keeping your stomach and intestines churning and digesting, even while you are sleeping. What will happen if you follow this rule? If you eat dinner at 5pm and stay up till midnight, you will have gone 7 hours without eating nutrients your body needs (carbs, protein, fat). At some point in the evening you will need a snack as your body will be hungry. If you decide to not eat a snack (because of this rule), and don’t eat till 8am the following day you will have gone 15 hours without food – your body is not built to live like this. It will eventually rebel against this behavior and will likely set you up for a binge. So, with that being said, if you eat a snack your body will figure out what to do with it. If you are physically hungry your body is saying it NEEDS the food; it has burned off the food you gave it at dinner; it is asking for more fuel to replenish what it has used.
