In our private Facebook group, I asked the question – do you have a bed time snack?

Some said they do have one and some said no they don’t. For some, they advised the bedtime snack still didn’t help with sleep, yet for others it did. It just demonstrates how very different we all are.

Weight Loss not Sleep

The initial reason I brought it up was actually in the context of weight loss rather than sleep. The original post in the other RP group that triggered this topic was someone asking if —

…not having a bedtime snack, but ending your food consumption at dinner and elongating the non-eating window (ie longer “fasting” overnight) was helpful to weight loss.

My short answer to this is— yes it is helpful to weight loss, based on my experience. I will explain more on this later.

However one answer had me shaking my head. I wanted to explain more for those who may come across this supposed “rule” for a pro metabolic diet. If you blindly followed this, the likely outcome would be weight gain or the inability to lose weight.

The contentious comment

Her response was “ The only time for fasting is only when you sleep, especially as a woman. Never go to bed hungry. Always have a snack before going to bed, fruit with cottage cheese, orange juice, jello, milk with sugar (or honey, sugar works wonders though) In order to balance hormones, blood sugar must be steady and not letting it drop. While you sleep and not eat for 8-9-12h, your liver’s storage of glycogen gets depleted, cortisol and adrenaline rise=thyroid function is suppressed. Must eat before going to bed! You’ll feel much better. You’ll sleep better too!”

So let’s break it down. On the surface of it, most of what she is saying is correct. However as Ray Peat always said, context matters.

When a bedtime snack helps

In the context of a person coming off Keto, Low Carb or Carnivore with poor glycogen storage, who wakes up constantly in the middle of the night with a cortisol or adrenaline surge—then the advice to eat prior to bed is sound. This will likely help the person’s energy levels to get through the night with enough energy to sleep through and not wake up.

When a bedtime snack doesn’t help

However, if a person has restored insulin sensitivity, has good glycogen storage, finishes dinner at say 6pm and is only mildly hungry before bed at 10pm and sleeps soundly for 8 hours without having a pre bed snack, then the advice of “must eat before bed” is not correct at all. Eating before bed in this case, just because you think it’s a definite rule, would be most likely be counter productive to weight loss. It was for me.

Your meal at 6pm, depending on what you have, will take hours to digest and assimilate. It will steadily provide you energy overnight if you are healthy AND if you eat a decent sized meal and have eaten enough during the day.

This is why meal construction, macro & calorie balancing as well as meal timing are so important. You can read more about this in my pro metabolic guidebook here.

How much glycogen do we store?

When it comes to glycogen storage, the body can store about 100-120 grams in the liver which in terms of calories is 375 to 480 calories. This is what is used for blood sugar regulation at night.

About 350-400grams are stored in the muscles, but this is only for use when utilising the muscles. (This is why it’s important to use your muscles after eating, to help with blood sugar regulation by using and replenishing muscle glycogen stores.)

Knowing how much glycogen the liver stores above, it is interesting to see how much energy you use at night while sleeping…

“You use an average of 320 to 480 calories during 8 hours of sleep. This number varies based on your basal metabolic rate (BMR), which is influenced by factors like age, gender, body composition, and overall health. The body uses this energy to maintain vital functions such as breathing and circulation, with Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep requiring more energy due to intense brain activity”

So while you sleep, your body will utilise the energy it pulls out of your last two meals as well as liver glycogen storage as needed.

Bedtime snack composition

If you are having a bedtime snack then it should be high carb, moderate fat & low protein. This is because your digestion is slowest after sunset and eating anything high protein at this time, including cottage cheese, will put unnecessary strain on your body. This is why Ray Peat recommended traditional ice cream like a Haagen Daz Vanilla for example which is 3g protein, 13g fat & 16g of carbs. Eat this with fruit and you will be balanced perfectly.

For me, when I was recovering from Keto, I needed to eat like every 2 hours.  See the What I eat in a Day article, which was at the beginning of my pro metabolic journey. This included a bedtime snack because it’s what my body needed in the 2 years it took me to recover my insulin sensitivity.

Keto Recovery

When I recovered, I was able to space out my meals to 3-4 hours apart without feeling overly hungry or like I was going to pass out. I continued the bedtime snack for a while. But found I was putting on weight while doing this. So I stopped having anything after dinner, even if I was mildly hungry. The result was no interruption to sleep and weight started to reduce. I felt nicely hungry in the morning, which is what is supposed to happen when you are healthy and your metabolism is firing well.

So from the weight loss point of view, yes your bedtime snack may be hindering your progress. However, because we take a health first approach, tackling the glycogen storage issue and ensuring sound sleep first, is far more important than weight loss at that time.

It reminds me of something I heard once—you need to be healthy to be able to lose weight properly and for the long term.

Sleep specifically

Now the other issue that arose from people’s responses in this post were that some were saying a bedtime snack didn’t help their sleep. Or it helped at first, then stopped working. So I think a future thread needs to be about sleep specifically because poor glycogen storage may be only one issue that hinders sleep. There are many more that we need to list or touch on, so that people can explore different contributors to poor sleep, to see what may be their specific issue.

The health of your teeth & meal spacing

I’ve written about these before in these two articles— Tooth Sensitivity & Migrating Motor complex— and it’s relevant here too. Briefly, if you don’t have enough space between your meals, you are stopping the remineralisation of your teeth and the elimination process in your body. Please read the articles to learn more.

However if glycogen issues are the main problem, then the priority is to resolve that first. Once solved, the above two reasons are enough to stop to bedtime snack protocol, when you really don’t need it.

Also from the comments people have said, “I have orange juice, salt & gelatin by the bed to have drink if I wake up.” If they do this, I certainly hope they at least have some water by the bed to rinse their mouth from the sugar & acid. (Even better would be water with a pinch of salt or xylitol crystals to ensure your mouth returns to the right PH level.)

One of the worst things you can do is just go back to sleep with that sugar & acid sitting in your mouth. It will erode your enamel and lead to decay and cavities. In the daylight hours, it is your moving saliva that helps neutralise the acid and bacteria in the mouth but when you sleep, saliva production is decreased and it all makes it worse.

I hope this was helpful!

Remember nothing is an absolute rule. Understand where it’s coming from and why & make the best decision for your own body.

Always learning,

Kristy