- Coffee: The worst time to have coffee is 6 hours before sleep since it can have significant and disruptive effects on sleep. Also, avoid any coffee-flavored treats like cappuccino-flavored ice cream before bedtime.
- Dark chocolate: A piece or 2 for dessert is fine, but an entire bar can affect your sleep because it also contains caffeine.
- Alcohol: Studies have shown that while alcohol may help you fall asleep faster, it negatively affects your REM sleep cycle, which can harm next-day concentration, memory, and motor skills.
- High-Fat Foods: Foods that have a high-fat content will make people feel sleepy in the daytime. They interrupt your sleep at night. They cause a feeling of discomfort. So it’s best to avoid burgers, pizzas, or fries before bedtime.
- Spicy food: There’s a change in body temperature when a person consumes spicy food, and you can also get heartburn from it when you lie down. Both these factors can disturb your sleep.
- Grapefruit: This fruit is full of vitamins and nutrients, including Vitamin C and potassium, but it’s also very acidic, and eating it before your bedtime may cause acid reflux and heartburn. Don’t stop eating grapefruit. Just eat it in the morning and never after dinner.
- Sweet Sauces: Sweet sauces such as salad dressings, ketchup, barbecue sauce, steak sauce, mayo, and pasta sauce can all have large amounts of sugar. Keep that in mind when consuming them.
- High Protein Foods: Eating high protein foods too close to bedtime, such as steak, puts stress on your digestive system, and they take hours to digest. Because high protein animal products are usually high in fat, they can also be inflammatory and even cause GI issues and heartburn.
- Cauliflower: Cauliflower takes time to digest, meaning your body needs time to work on it, so this can disturb your sleep. Try to avoid cauliflower before bedtime.
- Celery: Even though they’re super crunchy and satisfying, celery and other foods with higher water content like watermelon, cucumbers, and radishes are natural diuretics that will cause you to wake up in the middle of the night, running for the bathroom, disrupting your slumber.
- Tomatoes: Some people are sensitive to nightshade vegetables, such as tomatoes, causing inflammation flare-ups after eating them. This is due to solanine, a powerful inflammation stimulant in most digestive systems. Other tyramine-rich foods include eggplants, soy sauce, red wine, and aged cheeses, like brie and Stilton.
- Dessert: Foods containing large amounts of sugar can make you feel energized and awake no matter what time of day it is.
