A common question I get about nutrition is, “Will carbs before bed make me fat?”
As always, it highly depends on the individual, but I will give you some guidance into making the best decision for you. First, we have to know a little about the energy releasing hormone cortisol. Yes, I meant that: Energy releasing. When you think of cortisol, you think of “stress hormone.” But really what cortisol is doing is mobilizing fuel for energy. In the case of cortisol, a “healthy” person should have higher levels of cortisol when they are waking, and they should continue to drop throughout the day until they are low in the evening.
This should be the case if you need to mobilize energy in day hours and need less energy in the evening, and need to be able to rest and digest (unless you are a shift worker and this might be different).
We can signal the release of cortisol with food (or lack of food. This is actually how you feel the affects of fasting). In the morning, we will get a spike in cortisol which will get us up and moving. As we get food into our body, the cortisol will start to drop progressively throughout the day. The macronutrient that has the most affect on the release of cortisol is carbohydrates. Knowing this, we can utilize carbohydrates in the evening lower cortisol levels so we can get better sleep. But not all carbohydrates are created equal. A starch rich sweet potato is going to have a very different digestion time and affect on blood sugar than a donut. The sweet potatoes complex structure of carbs will take a while to break down and slowly release into your blood as you sleep. The donut on the other hand, is made up of more simple sugars that enter the blood stream much more quickly and are absorbed much more quickly.
If you lay of carbs completely before bed, your cortisol will start to rise during sleep and you will be left staring at the ceiling because your energy mobilizing hormone just kicked on in the middle of the night.
My take? If you want to keep cortisol levels under control as you sleep, eat 1-2 cups of starchy carbohydrates (rice, potato, yams, yucca, quinoa) 2-3 hours before bed.
Remember, this is a complex issue, and their are many factors that can contribute to weight gain and sleeplessness. However, I would give it a try for a few weeks and see if adding some starchy carbs to dinner improves your sleep. What do you have to lose other than those dark circles below your eyes?
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