Why?

I've heard from many different sources that we shouldn't eat for a couple of hours before bed.  Haven't you heard that?  But do you even know why?  I didn't until I read the book, Ultrametabolism.  I find this quite interesting, so I thought I'd share this excerpt with you!

The Biology Behind the Sumo Diet

There are some specific ways the sumo diet causes ordinary people to gain extraordinary amounts of weight. The first is that sumo wrestlers never eat breakfast. They wake up, and the first thing they do is start exercising vigorously. This combination of skipping breakfast and then training really hard for five hours means that by the time they get to eat, they are starving. As a consequence, they overeat—they eat much more food than they need to feel full.

To optimize our health and weight loss, we need to eat breakfast, to spread our food intake evenly throughout the day, and not to eat for at least two hours before bed. A recent study found that almost 3,000 people who lost an average of 70 pounds and kept it off for six years ate breakfast regularly. Only 4 percent of people who never ate breakfast kept the weight off. The only difference between the two groups was that the group who lost weight ate breakfast and the other group did not. They both consumed the same number of calories and the same types of food.

It turns out that it’s not only the type of calories you consume that is important in losing weight and maintaining weight loss, but the time of day you eat as well. Another important point is that sumo wrestlers go to sleep almost immediately after they eat. Sleeping immediately after you eat is a sure way to pile on the pounds. When we are sleeping, we are in a healing and repair mode, a storage and growth mode. Those of you who have teenagers know that they wake up taller in the morning than when they went to sleep. This is because they produce more growth hormone while they are asleep. You produce more growth hormone when you sleep, too. The problem is that once we finish growing up, we grow out!

The body slows down its metabolism during sleep, and any undigested food left in your system is stored for later use. How is it stored for later use? Usually as fat. If you can avoid eating for two to three hours before bedtime, you give your body the time it needs to digest the food. That way, when you go to sleep you are not storing the calories you just consumed as fat. Instead, you burn them to keep your bodily functions active while awake.

Hyman M.D., Mark (2006). Ultrametabolism (p. 56). Scribner. Kindle Edition.