14 DAY TRIAL // Every woman or every dieter out there must have already heard, at least a couple of times, the saying that eating after 7 in the evening is not recommended. As it turns out, ancient Chinese medicine has an explanation for that.
Heavy meals late in the evening – not to mention late night snacks – are one's worst enemy when it comes to health and weight.
If you're striving to shift a few extra pounds or to be healthy, you should strive to eliminate all meals and snacks after 7 in the evening, and to replace dinners with something light that doesn't put a strain on the digestive system.
So far, so good: we've known this all along. Because all the processes slow down during the night, fat is stored more easily in the body.
Now, here's another explanation for why we should avoid huge dinners.
As this older piece from the Global Healing Center says, the Chinese have known this all along: it's all about the levels of energy the body disposes of.
As regards digestion, they reach a max during 7 and 11 in the morning, which is why a heavy breakfast is recommended.
The same goes for lunch, because the body needs food for fuel to last the rest of the day.
After 7 in the evening, though, it shouldn't be put under extra strain of a difficult to digest dinner.
This is the time when the energy levels are at their lowest, which means that, if you eat too much, you're using whatever energy is left for digestion, instead of allowing it to be used to heal the body.
“Ayurvedic and Chinese medicine believe the late evening and early morning hours are the time for cleansing and healing the body from the day before,” GHC writes.
“If we are using the body’s energy to digest food (which should have occurred during the active day-time hours), we are not giving the body that precious cleansing time that it needs to help fight off disease, as well as help heal ourselves naturally,” adds the publication.
Whenever we have a considerably sized dinner, we're putting our body under increased strain, which explains the feeling of exhaustion and even pain in the morning, upon waking up.
Because replacing dinner with a healthier option, or even eliminating it altogether isn't something that can be done overnight (we could not resist the pun), GHC also offers a few essential tips to curb late night cravings.
See here for more.