A couple days shy of a week ago, I awoke to that common sensation of extremely puffy eyes. You know the feeling I’m referring to; the one that’s followed by a quick glance in the bathroom mirror which only serves to verify that, ‘yes’ – you’ve got pools of fluid swelling up under the skin of half your face from what seemed a night of comatose-like slumbering. And nothing but the passing of the first few hours of the working day seems to fully alleviate it – not even the effects of a hot shower.
But this was a puffiness and lethargy to a degree of which I’d not awoken to in a long time. I was on a few days’ hiatus, rolling out of bed in a motel room over on the East Coast. It was quickly becoming evident that I needed to get back to work so I could get some rest from this few days of supposed… rest.
Then it occurred to me: I know what’s dragging me down, I thought as I observed the unusually swollen puff of skin under my right eye. It’s those late-night carbohydrates. The nocturnal blood sugar will getcha every time. It fatigues you. It contributes to excessive sleep. It piles up body fat – and subtly accelerates aging. It’s why my eyes felt like they were half closed for the first couple waking hours of the morning.
I sometimes do that when I go out of town. I allow my eating habits to go astray. Why not? It’s occasional excursions into such allowances that can keep us on track. But as I gain experience, such excursions increasingly provide nothing more than contrasts between behaviors that help me feel terrific and those that leave me desirous of that feeling.
So what was the behavior I’d temporarily abandoned for my trip? Simply this: not eating carbohydrate foods for at least four hours (and preferably six) before going to sleep. This is a practice not foreign to bodybuilders, but often unknown to the uninitiated. It’s such a simple little tactic that, done alone, can make a big difference in your appearance and wellbeing without causing hunger or deprivation.
Why do so many not know this or practice it? I haven’t been able to answer that. Multitudes of people will adopt extreme regimens like the Atkins Diet while not even considering what a simple change in the timing of the intake of a macro-nutrient can do. They’ll stop eating carbs all day, then recidivate to piling them down. Yet they often bypass the long-term positive results that could be derived from the small tactical shift of simply watching when they eat them. Allowing your heaviest carbohydrate intake during the first half of the day and shifting to just protein and some dietary fat by nightfall can make you leaner and improve your energy levels.
Invariably, I notice that people who claim to not feel hungry in the morning will admit upon inquiry that they regularly eat high carbohydrate foods in the late night hours. "Of course you don’t feel hungry when you get up" I tell them. "… You’re awakening with a fairly high blood sugar level." Along with that comes the lethargic and unrested feeling that’s only exceeded by the overly puffy face.
Is it merely coincidence that many of those same people wrestle with a body fat problem?
Do yourself a favor if you don’t already practice this: adopt the bodybuilder’s tactic of reducing carbohydrate consumption as the day wears on. Finish the day by eating only protein and some dietary fat for the final four to six hours of your waking time.
Just utilizing this one simple measure can start you on the road to leanness and improved fitness.
