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Assume you practice 4 times per week in gym regularly and running once (30 minutes) per week. Each training gym session is from 45 minutes to 1h 30 minutes.

I am in the mass building phase. I often forgot to eat enough food during day because I am studying too. Therefore, I eat mostly during evenings and just before going to sleep. There are two problems when going to sleep

  • if I eat whey proteins (which have little creatine inside) or bread with proteins, my stomach swells and I feel pain in the transversum duodenum in the supine position but not in slightly elevated position. The creatine may cause the symptom.
  • so sometimes I decide not to eat before going to sleep but then I have to wake up and eat during night because I am so hungry and feel weak.

I am interested in how to regulate the diet in the evening and how to prepare for sleep. What are good nutrients and how much and when exactly?

When you should eat creatine? I think not before going to sleep.

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    If you are doing any reasonable strenuous sport practicing and running 2 other times a week it would be extremely difficult to build any mass regardless of what your nutritional chooses are.
    – pufferfish
    Jul 7, 2014 at 19:18
  • I find it amazing that you can pinpoint the pain to the transverse duodenum.
    – JohnP
    Jul 7, 2014 at 21:45
  • @TimothyPuffer I decreased the amount of running to be more realistic: once per week and 30 minutes only for lower back muscles. Jul 8, 2014 at 7:11

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I'm going to tackle the issues of creatine timing, general eating, and bedtime eating separately.

You should take your creatine sometime around when you work out, either before, after, or both. Bodybuilding.com offers a write-up about a study, and this study found some evidence pointing towards achieving better results when taking creatine after a workout, but the article highlights the fact that before or after is not of extreme importance. There is nothing explicitly wrong with taking your creatine before going to bed, but it appears to be causing problems for you, so I highly recommend moving your intake time.

For your general eating, you should make a strong effort to space your meals out throughout the day, especially if trying to build mass. Your stomach problems could also be linked to eating too much in a short period of time at night, as going to a full state straight from a completely empty stomach state can cause issues. Eating right during the day will help you to avoid this problem of getting up at night for food. If you're waking up during the night, you are not getting the rest you need to recover, and are also setting yourself up for sleep problems by creating an unsustainable sleep cycle. While it may require setting alarms or some other measure, eating throughout the day is key.

Before bed, if you want to eat something, ideally it should be something small with protein. It may be that the problems you are associating with protein are a result of overeating before bed, or, as you mentioned, the creatine. I recommend trying small snacks like slices of turkey, a glass of milk, or a greek yogurt before bed. If those continue to bother your stomach, I would switch to fruits or vegetables, and also see a doctor to try and identify any food allergies. As I mentioned, however, a pre-bed snack is not a necessity, and not eating post-dinner may help to rectify your issues.

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