Your bowels love a good routine, so when your routine is off, expect some bowel delay and maybe even a little indigestion. Something I’ve always had a hard time with is eating dinner early because I come from a Latin household where dinner was generally anywhere from 8-10pm. I’ll always remember the first time I realized this might be unusual when my first boyfriend called the house around 9pm when I was 16 years old. He thought I didn’t like him because my mother said I’d call him back since I was eating dinner! I honestly thought only old people or weird kids who need to be in bed by 8pm ate any earlier.

In any case, I don’t enjoy going to bed on a full stomach. It contributes to indigestion and acid reflux, which I recently discovered I suffer from as evidenced by the acid patterns on my back molars. I had to get fucking crowns last year after hardly having had any dental work done other than braces in my childhood. But you think that stops me from shoving my face with my favorite salad followed by some bullshit Snap Harvest crisps while starting some new trash tv about Palm Beach socialites after getting home at 930pm from a long day at work then going straight to bed completely exhausted and about to puke? Hell no. I fucking love it, minus the full stomach.

So here’s my advice: if you absolutely cannot break the pattern of late night eating like me, at least make it something healthy and low acidity (you want to eat foods with a PH higher than 5). My favorite salad, Maddy’s Nourishing Kale salad is delicious and very low in acidity with the exception of the citrus and dried cranberries in it. I should have skipped the crisps. When you do experience a super late dinner, make sure to wait for your bowels to empty in the morning before eating breakfast. Thankfully, this Nourishing Kale salad is very bowel friendly and has already sent me to the bathroom so I can get on with my day. You can find the recipe here: