Eating Before Bedtime: What Can it Lead To?

Mom may have warned you that eating before bedtime can give you nightmares. You may have even heard that eating before bedtime can lead to excessive weight gain.

Askmen.com says that the type of food you eat before bedtime will affect you in different ways:

"If you're seeking sweet dreams, avoid eating before bedtime. While no conclusive studies prove that eating before bed leads to weight gain, eating too much food, or eating spicy foods, fatty foods and caffeine one to three hours before bedtime can reduce the quality and length of your sleep, making you fatigued, sluggish and generally not fun to be around the next day. Eating fatty foods before bed will slow down the emptying of the stomach, exacerbating indigestion, while spicy foods can lead to heartburn and indigestion."

Well, I don't know about the weight gain or sleep quality, and many people I know of claim to never have dreams, let alone nightmares. I on the other hand, have always been a heavy dreamer. Here is a recent dream I had after eating right before bedtime and falling asleep with the television on...

I dreamed that my older sister and I were riding in the back seat of one of those old light cyan colored Chevy's, the kind with the fish tail on the back. In the front seat were 4 well-known celebrities: John Travolta was driving, Sylvester Stalone was on the far right passenger side next to the door, and in the middle were 2 other male celebrities whom I don't remember but they were of the same stature as John and Sylvester and they didn't say much, that I can recall.

John was doing most of the talking, making cynical jokes and doing that laugh, the way he does. Then Rocky (I kept calling him that) would have a rebuttal and we'd all start laughing. Rocky was also fluent in American Sign Language (ASL), so he would do some signing as he talked, though no one in the car was deaf. I'd sign back to him, but I got stuck when I was trying to say the word, 'much.' I wanted to say something was 'much more,' in reply to whatever it was he'd said to me. I asked him the sign for the word 'much' but he wouldn't tell me. In fact, he got irritated that I didn't know the sign for the word 'much!'

Well, I had been drinking a can of Coca Cola and eating something. I had sat my Coke down to pick up more of whatever it was that I'd been eating but when I went to take another swallow of my Coke it was gone!

I was asking everyone where it was, I was sure they were playing a game with me and hiding it. Then my sister said, 'Did you look in the refrigerator?'

Yeah, so somehow I had this full size refrigerator sitting in front of me in the back seat of this '57 Chevy. It was an old type refrigerator like my grandfather used to have. You know, the ones that had the door that was kind of round and bowed out?

Anyhow, I opened the door to the refrigerator and there was some food and jars and stuff in there, but there was also a little miniature sized Lucille Ball sitting on the top shelf! Lucy got up and began to sing and dance and kept talking about how she wanted to 'be in the show.' She was wearing that dress, I think it was red with white polka dots that flared out at the bottom and had that wide white collar and that big buckled belt on that made her waist look so tiny. Well, at least those are those the colors I thought the dress was on our old black and white TV. In my dream the dress was the same, only it was navy blue with the big white polka dots.

I closed the door on the little dancing Lucille Ball and went back to begging everyone to give me back my can of Coke. Rocky Sylvester and John Travolta were still laughing and joking and teasing me. Then, once again, my sister asked me if I'd checked the refrigerator. I got a little irritated at that but, figured I'd check again in case they'd slipped it in there when I wasn't looking.

This time when I opened the refrigerator door, Lucy was gone and the refrigerator's contents were a little emptier. There were only a few jars ant things in there.

I was closing the refrigerator door and about to ask about my soda and the ASL sign for the word 'much' again when one of Fergie's songs came on the radio. It was the song that begins with that old Temptations tune, 'Get Read, 'Cuz Here I come.'

I really liked that song so I started singing and dancing in the back seat. I looked up and saw Rocky watching me through the rearview mirror. I got embarrassed and stopped dancing and singing immediately. I felt that embarrassment so strongly that I woke myself up to get away from it!

Later that morning when I got into work I learned the sign for the word 'much' from one of my coworkers!

I don't know if my dream had anything to do with eating before bedtime or from leaving the television on but ...the morning before that I dreamed that I was fluent in French. I woke up confident that I could really speak French fluently, but when I went to say something, the language completely slipped my mind and I got really bummed out that it was only a dream.

If nothing else, I guess I can say my dreams sometimes lead me to higher aspirations!