Tips for Eating Late at Night

[shelley]

As you know, the power of digestion wanes the later it gets. It's not great to eat late at night (after 8ish) but some of us have weird schedules or can't slow down during work enough to eat.

As bad as it is to eat late at night, it's also bad to be so calorie-deprived that we can't sleep deeply. So if you have to eat late at night, here are a few tips on how to do it without overloading your digestion:

Have whatever you're eating with ginger or peppermint tea.

Add spices any way you can.

Avoid highly processed foods or fake foods - they take too much work.

Accent fermented foods - they're already pre-digested. Kefir, sauerkraut, kim chee, umeboshi plums, have all been pre-digested by microbes so your body has to do very little work. A kefir smoothie is a great midnight meal.

Try a fruit pie, fruit blintzes, stewed fruit, or fruit sauce with a small scoop of ice cream. It's comforting, filling, and cooked fruits don't ferment. Use a premium ice cream and the calcium will put you to sleep in no time!

A simple soup with good broth and blended veggies is also very easy to digest, very comforting and easy to make. If you must eat canned, make sure it has no MSG.

Skip breakfast the following day, wait until lunch to eat.

Hope that helps!

[kaleidoscope]

I often have a kefir smoothie around 10:00ish beacause of my work schedule... Does it make sense to take a betaine hydrochloride pill with it? Especially because it's high in calcium -- it requires more stomach acids, right? I tend to have low stomach acids anyway. I have to be really careful about not eating too much in one meal or else my BMs get messed up.

[shelley]

You can try it without it and see, but the calcium will take down stomach acids for a time, yes. If that's all you're eating - the smoothie - then it's not such a huge deal. You've already done the stomach's job by putting everything through a blender so it's already all in tiny bits, ready for the small intestine.

[LILA1963]

Have whatever you're eating with ginger or peppermint tea.

Is it better to have the TEA with the MEAL ~ or ~ right AFTER ????

I was always told that drinking after a meal SLOWS DIGESTION ??
Is this another myth ????

Maybe it's different for a warm cup of herbal tea ???

TY

[shelley]

You can have it with the meal, just make it the one cup.

Drinking tons of iced drinks will impair digestion terribly. But a small cup of the right herbal tea or a fermented drink like Lassi will aid digestion tremendously. If you're eating soup wtih a lot of broth, then no fluids whatsoever, they're already in the soup.

[LILA1963]

That's a grand idea ... TY