Key Takeaways
- Sleep and nutrition are inextricably linked parts of the same biological system. What and when we eat influence a number of physical factors that can affect sleep quality.
- Better sleep depends on far more than a good bedtime routine; it’s built throughout the day on factors like meal timing and quality, stress, and movement.
- Tracking is key to building a big picture view of your sleep and overall health. Data reveals patterns that help you make smart adjustments.
- The future is connected: As wearables and health apps like MyFitnessPal generate more user data, the opportunity becomes more than just giving people more numbers, helping them instead to understand how everything—sleep, nutrition, exercise, metabolism, and more—works together, turning raw data into actionable insights (and of course, better sleep).
The key to a better night’s sleep just might be in the kitchen.
For years, diet and exercise have dominated the conversation around weight and metabolic health, while sleep has often been treated as something somewhat adjacent: important, certainly, but largely separate. That distinction is becoming harder to maintain.
For Erin Palinski-Wade, registered dietitian, certified diabetes care and education specialist, and member of MyFitnessPal’s Scientific Advisory Council, the connection became clear through her work with clients. People who seemed to be doing everything “right”—watching what they ate, exercising, counting calories—were still struggling with exhaustion, cravings, and weight. Looking at nutrition, blood sugar, sleep, stress, meal timing, and lifestyle together revealed a more complete picture.
Ahead of the September 15 release of her new book, The Sleepdemic Solution: The 7-Day Reset to Fix Your Sleep, Restore Your Metabolism and Lose Weight Without Fighting Your Body, we spoke with Erin about the connection between your plate and your pillow, the role nutrition can play in sleep, and why the future of metabolic health may depend on understanding these signals together.
MyFitnessPal: What first made you connect sleep and metabolism in your practice?
Erin Palinski-Wade: The connection really became impossible for me to ignore in practice. I started noticing that the days my clients struggled the most with intense sugar cravings, overeating, and low energy almost always followed a terrible night of sleep.
And then I saw the reverse happening too. The nights they were tossing and turning were often preceded by things like skipped meals, late-afternoon caffeine, or big blood sugar spikes during the day. That was my “aha” moment: these weren’t two separate problems. Sleep and metabolism were part of the same biological loop.
I see it all the time. There’s almost always a common thread among people who feel like their metabolism is fighting them: they aren’t sleeping well. We’ve almost normalized chronic exhaustion, even though it can have such a profound impact on hunger, blood sugar, metabolism, and weight.
MFP: You talk about “sleep-inducing foods.” What makes a food supportive of sleep from a nutrition standpoint?
EPW: I think the biggest misconception is that sleep is only about what you do right before bed. Your body is actually building the chemistry for sleep throughout the entire day, and food provides some of those building blocks.
Certain foods naturally provide nutrients that support melatonin, serotonin, and tryptophan pathways, while others provide magnesium, vitamin D, omega-3s, or antioxidants that can help calm the nervous system, regulate your circadian rhythm, reduce inflammation, or support the hormones involved in sleep.
And timing matters too. It’s not just what you eat, it’s when you eat it.
One that surprises everyone is dark chocolate. It contains tryptophan and serotonin, which are precursors to melatonin, and when you eat a small amount earlier in the day, it can help set the stage for melatonin production later that night.
Pineapple is another surprising one. Tart cherries naturally contain melatonin, and walnuts are what I call a “triple threat” because they provide melatonin, magnesium, and omega-3 fatty acids.
The bigger idea is to stop thinking about food only in terms of calories, protein, or carbs, and start thinking about food as information you can use to help tell your body when to wake up, regulate energy, and wind down.
MFP: So it isn’t only what you eat, but how you eat?
EPW: Absolutely. You can eat all the “right” foods, but if you’re skipping meals, rushing through dinner, eating while stressed, or having a huge meal late at night, your body is still getting a stress signal.
I focus on creating a predictable rhythm: regular meals, slowing down when you eat, and avoiding that pattern of undereating all day and overeating at night. It’s not about perfect eating; it’s about creating a pattern your body can trust so it knows when to be energized and when to wind down.
MFP: What’s a common “sleep saboteur” you see people overlook?
EPW: Blood sugar instability is one of the biggest. If blood sugar is swinging throughout the day, or dropping overnight, it can trigger cortisol and adrenaline, contribute to cravings, and even wake you up in the middle of the night.
That’s why I focus on regular, balanced meals with protein, fiber, and healthy fats—not just what someone does at bedtime.
MFP: Sleep tracking and wearables are everywhere. Where does nutrition fit into a conversation increasingly dominated by tech and biometrics?
EPW: I love that technology has made people pay attention to their sleep, but a wearable can tell you how you slept; it can’t necessarily change the inputs that helped create that sleep.
Nutrition is one of those inputs. Light tells your brain what time it is, while food helps set your metabolic clock. What you eat, when you eat, and how stable your blood sugar is throughout the day can all influence melatonin, serotonin, your circadian rhythm, and ultimately how well you sleep.
So I see wearables as the feedback, and nutrition as one of the tools you can actually use to change the outcome. That’s why I recommend my clients track their food intake and how they sleep with tools like MyFitnessPal. Having the data and tracking the trends can quickly help you identify what is and isn’t working for your body.
MFP: As a member of MyFitnessPal’s Scientific Advisory Council, how do you see tools like nutrition tracking and habit-building fitting into the strategies you outline in the book?
EPW: I’m a big believer in using tracking for awareness.
Tools like MyFitnessPal can help you spot patterns you might otherwise miss. Maybe late meals affect your sleep, or a certain breakfast gives you steadier energy and fewer cravings.
I encourage people to track those connections between food, timing, sleep, energy, cravings, and blood sugar so they can figure out what works for their own body. I always tell my clients: the more data you can track about your own health, the more awareness it brings, and the easier it becomes to achieve your goals.
MFP: What do you wish more health and wellness brands understood about sleep?
EPW: Sleep isn’t just a nighttime problem. You can’t simply add one bedtime product and ignore everything that happened during the other 16 hours of the day.
Morning light, meal timing, blood sugar, caffeine, movement, stress, and nutrition are all sending signals to your circadian rhythm. Better sleep is something you build all day long.
MFP: Where do you see the conversation around sleep and metabolic health heading next?
EPW: I think we’re going to stop treating sleep, nutrition, blood sugar, and metabolism as separate conversations.
The future is much more about circadian health and understanding that when you eat, when you sleep, when you get light exposure, and how stable your blood sugar is all work together.
I also think we’ll see more personalized use of wearables and tracking, but the goal shouldn’t just be collecting more data. It should be using that data to make simple, realistic changes that improve how you actually feel and function.
That shift, from measuring individual health behaviors to understanding how they interact, has implications well beyond sleep.
As health technology gives people access to more personal data than ever, the opportunity isn’t simply adding more metrics to the dashboard. It’s helping people translate those signals into something they can actually use—into something that makes their lives measurable better.
Nutrition offers a uniquely powerful place to start: a mandatory, everyday input that has the power to influence energy, blood sugar, metabolism, performance, and as Erin’s work illustrates, what happens after we close our eyes.
Better health rarely comes down to optimizing one thing in isolation. More and more, the value lies in helping people see the connections that tie all parts of their lives and journeys together.