Eating at night/Cravings before bed

RobWPowell

Does anyone have cravings before bed? I do and it drives me crazy. Have not been able to break that lousy habit. I'll consume 30%+ of my daily caloric intake from 8-10pm. It's almost muscle memory for me to wander in the kitchen and grab food.

Clive_1963

I did (do sometimes) and it also put my weight up by about 4-5kg's in the couple of months during lock down. I was fooling myself I would eat quark or Greek yogurt with a spoonful of jam in it and then once I had started I would find cakes and cookies etc.

Since starting this new diet if i get a craving or hungry I grab 3-4 cherry tomatoes as I am allowed 100g of these per day just and drink fizzy water so I trick myself into thinking I am eating.

kungfujayne

Hi, yes i'm the same, it totally ruins my eating for the day, I get really miserable if I cant have toast or crisps in the evenings!

yirara

What do you do in the evening? Are you active somehow or just watching tv? One reason to eat could be simply boredom. Thus have you tried keeping yourself busy with something interesting? Another option: some people find their hunger gets reduced when they work out. Doesn't need to be much: a walk around the neighbourhood, a bit of stretching or yoga (hey, one is never to old to work on the front splits. Now that's a stretch target!) or anything else really. What happens if you go to bed at 20:00?

Clive_1963

yirara wrote: »

What do you do in the evening? Are you active somehow or just watching tv? One reason to eat could be simply boredom. Thus have you tried keeping yourself busy with something interesting? Another option: some people find their hunger gets reduced when they work out. Doesn't need to be much: a walk around the neighbourhood, a bit of stretching or yoga (hey, one is never to old to work on the front splits. Now that's a stretch target!) or anything else really. What happens if you go to bed at 20:00?

Mine kicks in when watching TV. If i sit playing games on my PC I do not have the craving. (a 57 year old gamer whoo hoo) I also go to bed at 00:00 on a work day so try to stop gaming around 22:00 to allow myself to chill before bed.

yirara

kungfujayne wrote: »

Hi, yes i'm the same, it totally ruins my eating for the day, I get really miserable if I cant have toast or crisps in the evenings!

So it's more of a behavioral thing then? If so then it's something you have control of. what happens if you eat a big piece of water melon or something else low calorie? What if you just have the amount of salt that corresponds to the amount of crisps you'd eat?

lgfrie

Big time. That's how I ballooned from my college weight of 193 pounds to 330 (now back down to around 240 and still working on it). I doubt more than 10 % of my excess weight was put on before 10 pm.

30 % doesn't sound too bad. I am easily capable - and have done so, hundreds of times - of eating 1,800 calories during the day and then consuming 2,000 or 3,000 calories in half an hour, sometime around midnight. Sounds like a lot of calories but it's super easy. 1 pint of Haagen-Dazs, 1200. Big bag of Doritos and salsa, 2000, or cheddar pretzel chunks, 1400. Couple of candy bars to round things out, 440. Easy. And that's excluding real binge behavior, like ordering a large pizza after all that other stuff is sitting in my stomach - done that plenty of times, too. Even when I'm not binging, I can do a thousand calories in minutes late at night. Bagel with a few ounces of cheese melted on it, 600, add a granola bar and a handful of nuts, bam, 1000.

It took an act of will for me to end that destructive behavior, and you can do it too.

You need a "kitchen is closed" rule in your house, or at least for yourself. Pick a time, any time. 7 pm, 8 pm, I wouldn't go much past 8. When the clock strikes that time, you are done eating until the morning. No exceptions for a month, no excuses. You need to gain confidence that you can break the habit, and the only way you can gain the confidence is by ... actually breaking the habit. In my house, the only "food" consumed after 7 pm is water or unsweetened iced tea. As an habitual, lifelong night-time snacker, I cannot recommend this approach highly enough.

You will need to learn to be a little hungry at night, for a while. Hunger pangs and their associated psychological cravings are weird things. We're conditioned to react to the tiniest little hunger pang with a panic reaction to stuff food in our face, when in reality, hunger pangs are incredibly minor physical sensations, compared to things like the aches and pains we endure constantly. Not only are hunger pangs and cravings minor, they're also temporary. Within one week of implementing a "kitchen is closed" policy in your house, you will discover that hunger pangs dissipate in around 10 minutes and then you will likely either stop having them, or they'll become pretty rare. Not feeding the beast does make it shut up.

mullanphylane

I'm in the same boat. If I remain mentally active in the evening I don't snack, but if I sit in front of the boob tube I feel as though I'm starving. So, I spend time with hobbies in the evenings. Or try to.

There was a time I could eat the way Igfrie described and not gain an ounce. But no more, and those habits are hard to break. He's also right about it being a habit that can be broken.

Love_2_Hike

It's your Circadian Rhythm out of sync. Night time is for sleeping, not eating. You are not hungry, you are tired, so go sleep. Google it, its a very interesting biological process.

Oneka5

I don't have many night cravings anymore. If I have a set schedule during the evening after work and then after dinner then I usually don't snack. I also try not to keep any "bad" snacks in the house like chips and cookies. But, I've been drinking tea at night which helps get me relaxed for the night, winds me down.

RobWPowell

Excellent advice @lgfrie. Hell, all of you have excellent advice. I firmly believe the hunger is a byproduct of my idle mind at night - or boredom. I have started putting notes in 'interruption spots' around the house that say NO FOOD AFTER 7:30pm. And I've made sure my fruit and unsweetened tea are front and center in the kitchen. I have to stumble over them to get in there. Hopefully this helps start a good habit, otherwise, I'm installing speed bumps on the way to my kitchen.

HeidiCooksSupper

Food commercials set me off. Streaming means fewer triggers since there are fewer commercials for food. Another trick is to get up and brush your teeth. Take up a hobby that keeps your hands busy in front of the TV -- mine are loom knitting, pin loom weaving, and just doing paint by number on my phone. Go to bed early and read -- can be "junk reading" (i.e. formula fiction like cheap mysteries, romances, sci fi, etc.) Listen to a self-hypnosis recording -- there are lots of free ones out there. Cruise the web and haunt forums. Anything that takes your mind off the snacking urge. Eventually, you'll start building new habits. I'm starting to.