Sleep Hack #8: Your diet does affect your sleep

When some of our clients start eating a lower carb or more ketogenic diet or even start fasting their sleep cycles can become affected. It is important to understand and experiment to see how your body responds so you are able to tweak your diet accordingly. If you are on a ketogenic or low carb-diet It’ll take a couple weeks for you to get into ketosis; you may feel low energy and have trouble sleeping for a few days while your body switches from using sugar to using fat for fuel. But this should pass, however if you feel like you are still not sleeping well, you may benefit from eating more carbohydrates, this is particularly true for women, we prefer women to go on a lower carb diet (100-150g carb) instead of a ketogenic diet (under 50g carbs) which is very low carb and over time it can affect hormones.

Starting your day with a meal high in carbohydrates is not a good idea and often contributes to tiredness and low energy surges through the day. Think about how you feel after lunch if you eat a large bowl of rice? Usually wanting to head for bed or grab a coffee or something sugary to pick up your energy. Instead try to eat more protein, vegetables and good quality fat during the day to keep a consistent stream of energy.

In the evening you can experiment with increasing your carbohydrates- in the form of rice, fruit or some root vegetables as a dip in energy you may get from the increase in carbohydrates can be useful to induce sleep- as long as you go to bed and don’t reach for something sweet to pick up your energy again.