The perfect recipe for a good night’s sleep (2024)

Last week sleep therapist Dr Nerina Ramlakhan hit the headlines by suggesting eight almonds and two dates was the perfect breakfast to get a great night’s sleep.

The idea she outlines in her new book, Tired But Wired: How To Overcome Your Sleep Problems, is that this snack provides the perfect quantity of protein, fat and carbohydrate to balance blood sugar levels, tell your body you’re not in starvation mode, and so promote a good night’s sleep 16 or so hours later.

Her findings got me questioning what really is the perfect breakfast. The old adage ‘we are what we eat’ rings true. The food we consume underpins all of our bodily functions, from the digestive, hormonal and nervous systems, to how we sleep, cope with our busy modern lives, and, crucially, how we feel.

We all live stressful lives. But after 25 years as a nutritionist I’ve learned that supporting our bodies with the right kind of foods can have a radical impact on how we react to home and work.

Fixing what we eat can fix the way we feel. It doesn’t need to be complicated — a few simple strategies can make all the difference...

WHAT TO EAT TO HELP YOU NOD OFF

While I agree with Dr Ramlakhan that a good meal in the morning — literally, to break the night fast —– will help convince your body to rest better at night, I would recommend more than just a few nuts and dried fruit.

Set your day up in the right way with a simple, easy-to-digest breakfast such as porridge, which can be made before and reheated the following morning. Add different toppings to keep it interesting, such as stewed apple, sliced banana, or fresh berries.

For lunch, have something small but satisfying — anything too large may sabotage your night’s rest by sending you to sleep in the afternoon.

Try a bowl of homemade soup with toasted sourdough (easier to digest than many other breads, as the slow fermentation makes the gluten easier to cope with). You’re aiming to keep your gut calm — even the slightest gurgle can disturb your sleep.

If insomnia is a problem, avoid biscuits, cakes and chocolate from the afternoon onwards. Sweet foods flood your system with sugar, which may make you feel wired, especially if you’re sensitive to blood sugar changes.

The same applies to caffeine. No coffee after lunch, and do watch your mid-afternoon cuppa. If you skip this will you sleep better? Try it and see.

The best foods to induce a soporific state are starchy carbohydrates, including potatoes, pasta, couscous and rice. These stimulate the brain to produce serotonin, the feel-good hormone, which makes you feel more content and helps the body regulate its sleep-wake cycle. Try not to eat too late or too much, though, because a full stomach can lead to indigestion.

A glass of cold milk at bedtime is great for helping you nod off. Milk (especially cow’s, oat or almond) provides your body with tryptophan, an amino acid which promotes serotonin production. Milk also contains magnesium, which promotes sleep by relaxing our muscles.

WHAT TO EAT TO DESTRESS

Stress and anxiety can often throw your eating habits in one of two directions — either you struggle to eat, or, you comfort eat far too much (and often precisely the wrong things).

Whichever camp you fall into, eating like this can play havoc with your gut and really damage your ability to cope with the anxiety you’re suffering. Sadly, this can make stressful times even harder to handle. Learning how to eat to ease your anxiety is an incredibly useful life skill.

If you’re someone who forgets to eat, remember that going for hours without nourishing food will lower your blood sugar and your feel-good hormones, sending your mood plummeting.

The gut is often described as the second brain because it has a direct impact on the way we respond to hormones, such as endorphins, and cortisol, which impact on our emotions. The nutrients it absorbs are absolutely key to this — if you deprive it of them, it can’t do its job.

If you find it difficult to eat when you’re stressed, then don’t have three standard meals a day. Instead, aim for small regular meals every four to five hours.

The key is not to fall into the trap of constant nervous nibbling, as so often grab-on-the-go snacks are high in fat (think crisps, nuts, biscuits etc). If you forget to eat you’re probably not compounding a stressful life situation with weight gain, but you still need to watch your fat intake.

Fat can be very hard to digest especially when anxious, and you can end up feeling bloated, sore, and far from relaxed.

If stress makes you comfort eat, try to ask yourself why you’re eating the food before you do so. Overeating and bingeing on junk will leave you overly full and uncomfortable. It can also make you feel guilty, compounding your negative emotions.

It can feel tempting to try to get all of the day’s stressful tasks out of the way before you eat in the evening, but expecting yourself to deal with everything on an empty stomach is a tall order, so see if you can eat slightly earlier.

Starting the day with a good, easily digested breakfast such as baked apples sets you off on the right footing.

Apples contain pectin, which is very gentle and soothing on a stressed gut, and they generally have a low glycemic index value, which means the sugars they naturally contain don’t tend to cause an unwelcome blood sugar spike.

A bowl of pea and ham soup for lunch (which can easily be made at the weekend and frozen in batches), is warming and soothing to the gut. If you eat foods which are too cold they can be hard to digest, not least because you can end up swallowing a lot of air when eating. The same applies if the food is too hot. Also, don’t underestimate the fact that a warm tummy can give us a Pavlovian kick of comfort, reminding us of a childhood cup of cocoa and a cuddle.

The soup also provides protein in the ham, enough fat to get our brains producing leptin which gives us that contentedly full feeling, and good, yet gentle, fibre in the peas.

You’ll feel relaxed when you make and eat risotto in the evening, with rice being easy to digest, while the cooking helps calm the brain. Mushrooms are packed full of essential vitamins and minerals, along with easy-to-digest fibre which helps make us feel fuller for longer.

Have a glass of water with it — wine really won’t help — and if you feel like it later, a cup of chamomile, lemon verbena or liquorice tea to settle a nervy gut or passion flower and valerian to soothe an anxious mind.