Going to bed when you’re hungry can have some interesting side effects in the dream world, and it turns out it’s also a good way to lose weight as well! Here’s why.
Have you ever gone to sleep without eating dinner, or having eaten dinner but still feeling like you could eat more? The feeling of laying in your bed too tired to get up and eat, but craving a burger or some crisps? It’s annoying isn’t it?
It’s fairy common, but there are a lot of myths and wives tales about going to sleep hungry and we will try and bust them open in this post. The most common myth is weight loss, and that you can lose weight by going to bed hungry. Is it true?
Can you lose weight by going to bed hungry?
There is a common opinion that going to bed hungry can make you lose weight at an insane rate. The popular viewpoint is also that you can get really fat by eating carbs late at night, and so that late night kebab after the pub could really ‘pile on the pounds’ for you like nothing else. Are these statements true though?
Well, yes and no. Going to bed hungry won’t magically make you lose weight, at least, not any more than you would normally from just not eating as much. If you’re hungry, normally you try and fill that hole in your stomach with food, so by not eating when you’re hungry (whatever time of day it is) you’re taking in less calories and you’ll lose weight.
The time of day doesn’t really affect it much, as to your body, a calorie is a calorie. The body doesn’t care what time it is when you eat that Chinese takeaway, BUT and this is the key thing to consider here. During the day, most people walk around a lot. We move, run, talk and expend energy in a whole bunch of different ways.
When you’re asleep however, you use up almost no energy, and so you don’t need to draw on the food you’ve just eaten for energy. This means that going to bed after having just eaten a fatty burger will be more likely to convert into fat than if you ate it during the day, because you’re not moving around and you’re not burning off the energy you’ve just consumed.
Therefore, going to bed hungry technically does help you lose weight, and eating just before bed is more likely to make you put weight on. now that we’ve covered the health and fitness side of this topic, let’s look at the dreaming implications.
Effect on dreams
Going to bed without eating can have some strange effects on your dreams. As you’re laying there, focusing on the delicious food you’re going to eat in the morning you may find yourself salivating at the mouth.
That’s one of the unfortunate side effects of being starving hungry while trying to go to sleep, but there is another interesting thing about it.
When you’re hungry, your body and mind are almost in survival mode, and so you’re focusing on the food you’re going to find and eat tomorrow or late at night. You’re ‘focusing’ on it. That’s the key thing to take in here, when you’re hungry, you become more aware of yourself and you are more focused, because you want to get some food.
This can be translated into being aware in the dream, therefore becoming lucid because you’re hungry. It doesn’t ALWAYS work like this, and some people even say that going to bed hungry makes them have almost no dream recall let alone lucid dreams so it varies for everyone. From experience, I can say that going to bed hungry I’ve had some very vivid dreams about eating all sorts of food.
Searching for tasty lucid dream food
The next time you’re really hungry, go to sleep anyway and try to focus on the act of dreaming. Write your dreams down in the morning (you should be doing that anyway) and see what happens. From my experience, I always look for lucid dream food when I go to bed hungry, maybe it’s my body telling me that I need to eat something.
Whatever the reason for this it’s definitely fun to eat lucid dream food. Lucid dream food can taste much nicer than real food because your mind remembers all the good points about it. You’re able to recreate the experience of food (and almost anything else too) and amplify the ‘good bits’.
It’s this that makes lucid dream sex so intense, because your mind amplifies the good bits and blocks out the rest. You’re searching for a certain feeling, a ‘good feeling’ so when you find it, your mind makes it larger an more vivid/intense. Don’t just take our word for it, try eating a lucid dream cake when you’re really hungry!
Focusing on the physical sensation of hunger could make you wake up
There is one downside to going to bed hungry relating to dreams, and that is that by focusing too much on physical sensations, you’ll wake up. It’s a sad fact, but even though you’re lucid dreaming about eating a cake, you could focus ‘too much’ on it and wake yourself up, in search of something to eat.
For the most part, and assuming you’re tired enough to sleep deeply when you dream about lucid dream food etc that will be enough to keep your mind satisfied until the morning but there are times when you’re so thirsty or so hungry that even when you’re dreaming, you can’t help but wake up because the sensation of hungry is too overpowering.
Using hunger to INDUCE a lucid dream?
There is talk of a food induced lucid dreaming technique in some forums, but I’d say it’s not really that effective. Going to bed without eating will make you hungry and so you’ll naturally have more dreams about finding food.
The problem is that there’s no guarantee that you’ll become lucid as a result. The chances are that you’ll simply have a dream about eating food, and then wake up soon after because you’re starving and want to eat! There’ not real hook or trick with this that makes it induce a lucid dream, so you’re better of using a different technique like the fild method or something else.
Having more lucid dreams
Enough talk about food. Let’s talk about dreaming. Here’s how you can have more lucid dreams, and dream about all the food in the world, if you want!
- Get clued up on lucid dreaming by going through our bootcamp course or our Ebook collection and then start keeping a dream diary. (Just write your dreams down every morning, whatever you can remember)
- If you didn’t already know, there are some unique frequencies that can help you induce a lucid dream, they’re known as binaural beats and they’re very easy to use!
- Have fun, be patient and if you want to dream about food, be prepared, it will taste REALLY, really good
