The Long Road

07/16/2003 Archived Entry: "The X Hour Rule"

The three hour rule. It says that you shouldn’t go to sleep for at least three hours after having eaten a meal. This is because your body needs a certain amount of time to metabolize your meal, if you go to bed too soon after eating your body ends up just storing everything instead of burning it. Making you FAT. Anyways, I always try to follow this rule so I hardly ever eat at night or I’m always up really late if I do. Thing is, I don’t remember where I heard/read this rule; can’t even find a website for this. So who else has heard of this?

Apparently there is also a “four hour rule”; this one is about exercising. When you exercise, your cells build up in lactic acid and you need about 4 hours before your cells disperse the lactic acid again. If you go to bed before your cells have had enough time then you wake up with really sore muscles. So you either need to get a massage or wait around for four hours before going to bed. This really sucks! I always work out at night before going to bed so I’m supposed to stop that now. Or get a masseuse.

Replies: 23 comments

Uh... hard call. Perhaps stop exercising AND get a masseuse!

Posted by Hyperion @ 07/16/2003 03:25 PM EST

You mean I should get married?

Posted by Rayne @ 07/16/2003 04:42 PM EST

LOL. Do you want to get married?

Posted by Andrea @ 07/16/2003 06:39 PM EST

I guess if he marries someday, it will be with some girl by the name of Andrea :P

Posted by Anonymous #2 (not your brother, Thai) @ 07/16/2003 07:02 PM EST

So...when's the wedding?...

Posted by dAN @ 07/16/2003 10:48 PM EST

I think this is thoroughly off topic. Isn't it, Andrea?

Posted by Rayne @ 07/17/2003 12:21 AM EST

Depends on which Andrea they're talking about.

Posted by Andrea @ 07/17/2003 12:22 AM EST

Besides, I haven't had any proposals from out east....

Posted by Andrea @ 07/17/2003 02:48 AM EST

my friend's dad told her 'no showering for 30 minutes after eating' ... i think that's funny (i think he got it confused with the swimming thing .. i guess there's water involved in both ...)

Posted by melpie @ 07/18/2003 01:43 AM EST

LOL, OR he really did mean she shouldn't shower after eating??

Posted by Rayne @ 07/18/2003 02:44 AM EST

he really means no showering after eating ... we have told her that's it's ok and she can shower after eating ... (her dad had a few crazy things like that)

Posted by melpie @ 07/18/2003 10:56 PM EST

There is no such 3 hour rule. Yes, your body will store the calories as fat if you're not actively burning them. But you'll then convert the fat to glucose and burn it when you need it, later.

It's much more important to monitor your total caloric intake: so long as you consume N calories per day, no matter when you consume them, you'll (maintainlosegain) weight.

Posted by Joe @ 07/19/2003 03:30 PM EST

but to get your body to turn fat to glucose is amazingly difficult. the first 15 minutes of any form of exercise only burns what you've consumed that day, after those first 15 minutes then your body goes to stored stuff. so you should just not let your body store anything in the first place!

Posted by Rayne @ 07/19/2003 09:56 PM EST

What you're misunderstanding is that if you have only N calories in you at any time, and you burn M calories a day (just sitting there), your body needs to do something about the N-M. If N-M is positive, it will store those calories. If N-M is negative, it will fetch the calories from fat or muscle. This is true regardless of when you eat. So if you eat 3000 calories right when you wake up, and don't eat for the rest of the day, but you only burn 2000 calories a day, 1000 calories are going to fat.

The important thing to do, therefore, is to limit caloric intake. When you eat is of no concern.

Posted by Joe @ 07/20/2003 12:27 AM EST

So what happens when you eat 3000 calories right before going to bed instead of in the morning? The only real way your body has of marking a "day" is by when its asleep.

Posted by Rayne @ 07/20/2003 11:20 PM EST

you don't want to cause your body havoc though. it's better to have calories available when it needs them instead of forcing it to burn fat all day, then eating a giant meal and going to sleep immediately.

i've heard the eat the majority of your calories early in the day to lose weight motto by health people. ha ha, i sound really credible, don't i?

Posted by shawnathan @ 07/21/2003 04:20 PM EST

well, we're just talking hypothetically here with the one meal a day.

SEE? eat early in the day! even the great shawnathan himself says so!

Posted by Rayne @ 07/21/2003 09:35 PM EST

The only problem with eating right before you go to sleep is that you tend to discount those calories; that is, you forget you ate them, or don't take account of them, and so you end up actually eating extra calories over the course of a day (since you've presumably eaten a full day's worth over the previous day, and will eat a full day's worth the next day). If you count calories carefully, though, there will be no problem.

If you did only eat one 3000-calorie meal a day, just as you were going to bed, he rest of the next day you'd simply burn off the fat you stored. It's that simple!

Posted by Joe @ 07/21/2003 09:53 PM EST

I want a link to "prove" that statement.

Posted by Rayne @ 07/22/2003 03:58 PM EST

I can't find anything on-topic, for or against my theories. Actually I'd rather like to talk to a nutritionist about this. But I think if you use Occam's Razor you'll find that what I'm saying makes sense. Your body needs a certain number of calories per day. So long as you're not doing anaerobic activities, it gets this from fat and glucose in your bloodstream. Therefore you're going to burn the calories you consume, regardless of when you consume them and how they're stored.

Posted by Joe @ 07/24/2003 09:23 AM EST

I'm not a fan of Occam's Razor...

The way I see it, if you're body is resting and it sees this huge amount of un-used calories that's sitting there, it says to itself "i'm not gonna need these for the next little while" so it starts to store it away. Then you get up, eat breakfast and you start burning that, never getting around to what you ate just before having gone to bed.

I think we should agree to disagree cuz I'm not really convinced of your argument and you of mine neither of us are well versed in this subject matter to have any kind of authority. Expert opinion required.

I also think that we're starting to repeat ourselves.

Posted by Rayne @ 07/24/2003 04:08 PM EST

Yea my mom tells me all the time that u shouldn't shower right after eating.........i asked her for the reason.......she didn't know but she said it's true that u shouldn't shower after eating.....does anyone know WHY?

Posted by Jenny @ 07/22/2005 03:15 PM EST

Mmh, I recently heard about this guy in the military who was a fit, fit man and ate only one large meal per day at 7pm.

Well, he hit forty and he started gaining weight like crazy.

Went to a nutritionist, got told that he should have several meals a day rather than one large one.

I suppose it doesn't exactly shed that much light on the topic, but I think caloric intake should take into account the level of activity in the next few hours.

Re the showering thing, sounds like it might be Portuguese (or generally European) folk legend?

Posted by Arshwana @ 07/22/2005 05:42 PM EST