If you are trying to become fat adapted, improve your health at a cellular level and looking to improve your performance then you may want to experiment with time restricted eating and intermittent fasting.
Let’s take baby steps by stopping eating three hours or more before bedtime. Hopefully, you are have been working on your quality of sleep, pre-bedtime sleep prep hacks and determined your CHRONOTYPE (I am a lion!). I hope you are asleep by 10 pm and getting a quality 7-9 hours of sleep per night.
Next let’s stop eating three hours before bed no matter what… if you want to help your mitrochondrial function, prevent cell damage, aid in detoxification and repair processes overnight. Ideally, our body is doing nightly housekeeping while we are sleeping but if we are eating before bed then we are switching our body into digestion mode.
When we are sleeping- we are not moving much obviously so our energy requirements are at their lowest. If we eat before bed then we are intaking “fuel” that is not needed at the time so our body stores that “fuel” for later – stored in our fat cells. Remember when we eat a higher carb diet then we produce more free radicals as compared to a high fat diet. You can find lots of information on free radicals and oxidative stress from Dr. Mercola and other updated research websites.
As we sleep our body should be repair and detoxifying – so again we shouldn’t be digesting a meal or else we miss out on the recovery and repair cycle. Just think if you are staying at a hotel and the housekeeping service comes to clean your room while you are using the room -you miss out on getting your room cleaned because you were busy doing other activities.
Dr. Mercola in his book “FAT FOR FUEL” and “KETO FAST”, talks about the use of ketones while we are sleeping for fuel if we are fasting. Fasting allows our body to deplete the stored glycogen reserves and then burn fat for fuel when our “kindling” tank is depleted. If you are fat adapted and eating low carb, he says your glycogen stores become depleted in around 13 hours as compared to a higher carb eater- 18 hours to deplete stored glycogen. By eating too close to bedtime, we will refill the glycogen storage tanks and prevent the body from burn fat overnight for fuel.
When we fast or stop eating, we are providing our body more time to digest our food and tap into our fat storage for fuel- which is why I personally feel better when fasting especially before morning workouts! If we stop eating three hours before bed, say 7 pm before 10 pm bedtime (5 pm for me as I go to bed at 8 pm!), then it is easier to fast 16-18 hours (start with 12 hours fast).
Remember our body uses the least amount of fuel while we are sleeping – so why would we eat right before bedtime? Dr, Mercola shares the research on how the excess fuel from a late dinner or snacks will produce excessive free radicals and-
- damage our tissues
- accelerate aging
- contribute to chronic disease (inflammation!)
The researchers I follow share the benefits of fasting for reducing mitochondrial free radical production in order to improve the aging process and performance. Inflammation seems to be the culprit for most chronic diseases, so I personally want to improve my performance starting at a cellular level. So to stop eating before bed and use time restricted eating in my weekly routine is a simple habit to create!
To summarize why we should stop eating three hours before bed:
For years I have talked about Metabolic Efficiency and Metabolic Flexibility in regards to the fat-adapted athlete and metabolic testing. Now the word Metabolic Flexibility is becoming popular in relation to training your body to be fat adapted – burn fat over sugar/carbs/glycogen. By timing your eating window where you stop eating three hours before bedtime will make it easier to do a longer fast overnight (12-18 hours) and training the body to be metabolically flexible (burn fat). By eating in a smaller window (TRE), we reduce hunger, burn more fat and improve the ability to lose fat weight.
Are you motivated to become a fat burner? Stop eating before bed, improve your quality of sleep and eat within an eight-hour feeding window. You can improve your circadian rhythm, optimize our mitochondrial function, and energy production!
More to come on free radicals and oxidative stress for the athlete!
The WHOLESTIC Method Coach,
Debbie Potts
Also read past blogs related to this topic-
