I probably have a different opinion than most on this, but I'm not a big fan of eating much before bed. Many sleep sites (albeit, devoid of much "nutritional" explanations for sleep) advise not to eat any closer than about 2 hours before bed in order to get a good night's sleep. Some medical traditions from "the East", like Ayurvedic, advise not to eat any closer than roughly 2 hours before bed and recommend going to bed around 10 or earlier and waking up about 8 hours later, generally staying in tune with the setting and rising of the sun.
From my understanding, many views (e.g. taoism, holistic practices in general) take rest and digestion as 2 very important aspects to health, as well as moderation or "balance", as much as these might seem like annoying buzzwords. Digestion takes "energy": gastric juices are released by (the stomach??, the pancreas secretes bile (to emulsify fat?, the intestines use peristaltic motion to move waste through the system which involves many abdominal muscles, something has to happen to digest protein-especially meat, which I think is considerably more diffuclt to digest than most other things). With this view, perhaps sleep time is a good opportunity to balance out the constant ingestion of foods and supplements we surrender to during the day and take it easy to some extent? Of course, digestions isn't absolutely fatiguing like lifting weights or running, but it does take place in the body when it's asleep, with the opportunity to get the deepest amount of rest possible Deeper levels of rest, to my knowledge, are when human growth hormone (HGH), or at the least the highest levels of it, are secreted, and they're some good shit for recovery, growth, youth, etc.
It all depends on many things I guess. I imagine the best course of action might be to take supplements that supply your system with some sort of "good" amount of recovery (vit E, C, B--esp. for stress?, omega-3, clorophyll...these are some that come to mind) with limited amount of digestive processes needed. Since it's before bed, I'd think you wouldn't want supplements, or exceedingly large doses of them, to be too drastic, so I imagine you'd want to--especially after training--eat some amount of food that was nutrient-dense and easy to digest. IN other words, enough to supply you with a good amount of nutrients, at a slow rate, without taxing the digestive system "excessively".
In general, I'm a big fan of sleep. I can understand the need to fuel the body, especially while training hard, but I think there's definitely a temptation to over do it with diagnosing, pill-popping, powder stirring, etc. Still, I strongly believe that devoting 8 hours of your day to just sleep
usually outweights the benefits of squeezing in another big meal and consequently having a half-assed or 3/4-assed sleep. This is my general understanding and instinct about it all, but I'll admit I'm not well read up on some of the bio-chem/"science" behind all this shit. It's some food for thought, fully lame pun intended, rockin a new fuckin sig: "Wu-Tang beeeitches"!
