When's Dinner?

So just as yesterday I expanded on the whole sleep thing, today I'm building off of something I said way back here: how often do you need to eat?

And here's the thing - just as with pretty much everything I talk about here, it's a really personal thing. There are, of course, some general guidelines; if you're athletic and/or have a naturally high metabolism you'll probably do well eating five or six equally-sized but small meals a day spaced at two- to three-hour intervals, whereas if you're more sedentary you might find that you're perfectly fine with just the regular three meals at the generally-accepted times.

The important thing is recognizing what is and isn't working (there's that whole mindfulness business again!), but I will admit it can be difficult sometimes to recognize how your eating habits are serving you. Obviously, too many calories = weight gain and too few calories leads to weight loss and also crabbiness and fatigue if you're already at the low end of the weight spectrum, but what about timing? I've spoken to so many people who sleep horribly for no reason that they can see, and then it turns out that they eat dinner at like 9:30 at night. You have to give yourself time to digest! Calories are energy after all, actual energy, and that energy has to go somewhere. The calories from dinner eaten at a normal time (say, 6:00-8:00 or thereabouts) will go toward your evening activities and be sufficiently expended by the time you get to bed, but if you go to bed immediately after you eat then those calories have nowhere to go but your brain, which will (if your brain is anything like mine) keep you up for hours talking complete nonsense at you. Or those calories will demand that you get out of bed and do something, darn it, and sure you'll have gained a few extra hours of productivity that you might not have had otherwise but you'll feel like a zombie the next day.

Along the lines of what is and isn't working, there's the food sensitivity issue, which probably needs its own post but which I'm really probably not equipped to deal with here to be honest. All I will say is that there are a lot of reasons why eating something might make you feel crappy and if you legitimately feel better by cutting something out of your diet than go on with your bad self, just make sure that you're still getting all of the nutrients you need. But it takes an actual allergist to diagnose an allergy, and if you cut something out of your diet because you feel like you should for whatever reason and it either doesn't make you feel better or it actually makes you feel worse then for god's sake start eating that stuff again, whatever it was. Common sense, y'all. Also mindfulness. Listen to what your body tells you, it will almost never steer you wrong. And when it does, as is so often the case this time of year where Halloween candy is concerned (damn you, weird little candy corn pumpkins!), your common sense will rein it in.

Tomorrow we're getting smelly. But probably not in the way you're thinking. But I could be wrong! Either way, see you then.

- Sarah