How Late Should You Eat Dinner?

There are two habits that always seem to get sleep doctors riled up: using alcohol as a sleep aid and eating dinner late. If you want to dine with a doctor specializing in sleep, you’d better ask them to meet you for the early-bird special because they certainly seem to collectively be against a late-night meal.

But what exactly constitutes “late”?

An early evening dinner isn’t always realistic. Sometimes you have to make a dinner reservation past 8 p.m. to allow enough time to finish work, get ready and get to the restaurant. Maybe you work untraditional hours or your commute is long, making the idea of a 6 p.m. dinner completely laughable. And what about cultures where dinner is routinely eaten past 9 p.m., like in France or Spain?

We asked top sleep experts about the ideal time to eat dinner and what to do if you have to eat late but you still want to sleep well. Keep reading to see the verdict.

Different people have different ideas at what constitutes “late” (your grandparents may consider eating at 6:30 a late-night supper, for example). But sleep doctors define “late” in relation to your bedtime.

“Ideally, there should be three hours between when you eat and when you go to bed,” Dr. Catherine Darley, founder of The Institute of Naturopathic Sleep Medicine, told HuffPost. That means if you go to bed at 10 p.m., dinner after 7 p.m. is considered late.

There are good reasons why sleep doctors recommend eating dinner early in the evening. “Everyone is different, but generally speaking, eating a heavy meal before bed can make it difficult to fall asleep and stay in a deep sleep. This is because it forces your body to digest when it should be resting,” Dr. Hana Patel, a sleep expert for Time4Sleep, told HuffPost.

Patel explained that when the body is hard at work digesting your dinner while you’re trying to sleep, it could cause some discomfort as well as prevent gut bacteria from resting. This, she said, interrupts the hormones that regulate the sleep-wake cycle. In the short term, this can lead to acid reflux. In the long term, it can lead to inflammation and increase the risk of obesity.

Darley added to this, saying that eating dinner late disrupts the body’s circadian rhythm, which is a 24-hour cycle that is part of the body’s internal clock. “Since eating is a wakeful activity, eating late signals to the body that it should be awake,” she said, explaining how a late-night meal can keep some people up at night.

Certainly some people are affected by eating dinner late more than others. Maybe you can name someone who eats a late-night dinner followed by an even later espresso but has no problem hitting the hay, whereas you may have to avoid sipping anything at all before bed or you’ll have to pee in the middle of the night.

“Some people are more affected by late-night eating, like those with stomach problems or diabetes. These people might find that eating late makes their sleep issues worse,” said Dr. Shelby Harris, a licensed clinical psychologist specializing in behavioral sleep medicine. Clinical neurologist Dr. Daniel Barone told HuffPost that if you have acid reflux or a sensitive bladder, you absolutely should avoid eating or drinking anything roughly three hours before you go to bed to avoid sleep disruptions such as heartburn or having to pee.

All of this explains why sleep experts often warn against eating dinner late, but it still doesn’t negate the fact that it isn’t always realistic or even common to do in some cultures.

It’s true that eating dinner past 9 p.m. is the norm in some cultures, but Barone said it’s important to consider what these cultures’ lifestyles are like as a whole and not just focus on what time dinner is eaten. For example, he said that they may be going to bed later and waking up later than is considered normal in the U.S. This means there could still be three hours between dinner and bedtime, allowing food to digest before the body is trying to sleep.

Barone said late-night eaters in other cultures also may be eating a smaller meal at night (which is easier to digest) instead of the oversized portions that are the norm here in the States. This is certainly true of Mediterranean cultures, where lunch is bigger than dinner, according to Elena Paravantes, a registered dietitian who splits her time between the U.S. and Greece.

If eating dinner early in the evening isn’t possible — because of your work schedule or another reason — and you’re worried eating late will affect your sleep, Barone said it can be helpful to consider making lunch your biggest meal of the day and eating a smaller dinner. Hey, just consider yourself to be living the Mediterranean life!

Nutritional therapist Kerry Beeson said it can also be helpful to avoid fatty foods when eating a late dinner, which means forgoing foods that are fried, loaded with cheese or fatty cuts of meat. These foods are harder to digest and also more likely to cause heartburn. Beeson also recommends avoiding foods high in sugar because it can lead to a “sugar rush,” which can keep you up longer than you may want to.

“You need something that isn’t too fatty and difficult to digest, but equally you need something which will not spike your blood sugar. Lean poultry and other protein foods like nuts, eggs or salmon, contain tryptophan. The body converts tryptophan to the neurotransmitters melatonin and serotonin, which help to regulate sleep patterns,” Beeson told HuffPost.

You’ve heard it before, and you’re hearing it again now: All the sleep experts emphasize the importance of avoiding alcohol at least three hours before bed. Though alcohol may initially help you fall asleep, it gets in the way of deep REM sleep, and you’ll likely wake up in the middle of the night.

Even though eating dinner late can interfere with sleep, Darley said that it’s not going to do much damage if you’re doing it only once in a while. If you like to go out to eat on the weekends and enjoy a late-night glass of wine, it may mess with your sleep that night, but she said you should bounce back pretty quickly if you go back to eating and drinking on the earlier side. “I never want people to give up fun and a good quality of life just to maintain a strict sleep routine,” she said. “We need fun and friendship just as much as we need sleep.”

The big takeaway here: It’s our routine habits that matter the most. An occasional 9:30 p.m. dinner reservation isn’t going to forever ruin your sleep. But if you make eating and drinking right before bed a ritual, you’re more likely to experience sleep problems.