The importance of your dinners being healthy
After a long day full of activities, a healthy dinner helps us get a good night’s rest, take care of our health and control our weight.
Dinner is as important a meal as breakfast and lunch, and in it, quality must prevail over quantity since we eat it in the last hours of the day when our activity level is reduced and we prepare to sleep.
Regardless of our lifestyle, the diet we follow, or our age, we have to be clear that dinner has to be healthy, which implies that we forget about excess calories and saturated fat.
Dinner affects your night’s rest.
While we sleep, our body continues to function with an intensity similar to when we are awake. And it is necessary to ensure a good night’s rest so that our muscles can regenerate, our immune system regenerates, or our eyesight improves. Our digestive system also works when we sleep; that is why dinner must help our bodily functions develop correctly and allow us a good rest.
The time you eat dinner matters too
Dining too late is a habit that most nutritionists disapprove of. It is recommended that two hours elapse between dinner time and bedtime. That time is the one that favors us to have a good digestion that does not interfere with our rest, and we get to have a restful sleep.
“Breakfast like a king, eat like a prince and dine like a beggar” is undoubtedly one of the most famous sayings in the area of nutrition.
However, at the other extreme, it is essential not to “skip” this mealtime, since during sleep is when we spend more time fasting than at any other time of the day. So the solution is light dinners, which replenish the glycogen reserves necessary for processes during sleep.
Recommendations for dinner
In addition to light dinners, they should be made early to ensure better digestion and assimilation of food, avoiding annoying symptoms such as flatulence and bloating that can cause sleep disorders.
The basics of a healthy dinner are the same as lunch. Your last meal should have around 300-450 kcal from sources of fiber and protein, as well as a bit of vegetable fat.
It should include at least three food groups, fruits/vegetables, grains, and animal foods. Must be limited in saturated fat and simple sugars
The recommended distribution at dinner is:
¼ protein
1/4 of cereals and grains
1/2 of vegetables
One serving of calcium
Remember, a good dinner can lead to a good night’s sleep and an awakening that is not accompanied by famine, while a poor dinner can lead to snacking on high-calorie and unhealthy foods before bed.
An informal dinner does not have to be hypercaloric and unbalanced; it can be armed with a combined dish, which also helps to control quality by including small amounts of different foods: a protein food (egg white, lean cheeses, natural tuna, fish, turkey ), a vegetable portion (raw or cooked vegetables) and complex and filling carbohydrates (legumes, cereal, pasta).
When combining several foods, the portions can be smaller.
Dinner is an important meal, which has to be balanced and complete but always lighter since it is the last intake of the day before going to bed when energy expenditure is minimal.
Finally, it is essential to reduce or eliminate those foods that require more time for their digestion, rich in fat, fried, with a significant caloric intake, which the body no longer needs or will burn.
