How do I stop eating snacks after 6pm?

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Replies

  • ninerbuff
    ninerbuff Posts: 49,035 Member
    It's not a myth. Calories are energy. If you provide your body with energy you body needs to use that energy to burn it off.
    If you eat before you go to bed without exercising, then that energy isn't utilised.
    Good snacks for the evening are clear chicken soups / broths.
    So are you saying the body doesn't burn calories while you're asleep?

    A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
    IDEA Fitness member
    Kickboxing Certified Instructor
    Been in fitness for 28+ years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition
  • Graelwyn75
    Graelwyn75 Posts: 4,404 Member
    I almost always have an apple, an egg and a greek yoghurt before bed, I eat dinner around 9pm and don't go to bed until 2am so I get hungry. It does not affect my weight eating those things at that time as I tend to get up and head straight for the gym or for a bike ride, and don't generally eat much then until dinner. Time doesn't make a difference really.
  • Sarauk2sf
    Sarauk2sf Posts: 28,072 Member
    If you snack every night just build it into you daily calorie budget. Have a glass of water with the snack and you should be set.

    PS. It's okay to snack after 6 PM as long as it's not 3-4 scoops of ice cream with toppings :)

    What's wrong with half a tub of ice cream with toppings before bed? Assuming it's in your calories, of course.

    A lot of things, 1) It's dairy which is for fattening baby mammals 2) The sugar, which is the root cause of the obesity epidemic 3) The insulin fairy only comes out at night and will store it all as fat

    True story!
  • WendyTerry420
    WendyTerry420 Posts: 13,274 Member
    AS LONG AS YOU ARE UTILIZING THE CALORIES IT SHOULDNT BE AN ISSUE. If you eat some potato chips or something crappy like that i would say its probably not a good idea.

    I sometimes eat ice cream before going to bed. It fits my macros and daily calorie (sometimes it doesn't but I still do it)

    I dont agree with doing it this way. But thats just my opinion. Everybody does it differently

    Ice cream before bed is the best time for ice cream, IMO. (It's also the best time for a bowl of cereal or warm cookies with milk, or a piece of cake.)
  • WendyTerry420
    WendyTerry420 Posts: 13,274 Member
    What's wrong with eating after 6? I hate going to bed hungry. It doesn't matter when you eat as long as you stick to your calorie goal. The whole "eating right before bed is bad thing" is a myth.

    its not a myth if you eat crap before bed.

    Not a myth if you eat most of your calories before bed.

    YEP

    Um...still a myth. I eat close to (or over) 1000 calories within the hour before I go to bed (including a healthy dose of crap just before I go to sleep). I don't go over my calories for the day. See ticker for how it's working.

    What i'm saying is If you're not spacing out your calorie consumption throughout the day and eating 600-800 empty calories before bed (ie:junk food), you're not doing yourself any favors.
    And what I'm saying is....


    You're wrong.

    Yep, for me, right before bed is *the best* time for "junk food" because then I have all day to look forward to it and can go to bed happy.
  • WendyTerry420
    WendyTerry420 Posts: 13,274 Member
    It's not a myth. Calories are energy. If you provide your body with energy you body needs to use that energy to burn it off.
    If you eat before you go to bed without exercising, then that energy isn't utilised.
    Good snacks for the evening are clear chicken soups / broths.

    Soup is for lunch on a cold winter's day. It's not a snack at all, imo.
  • fausto412
    fausto412 Posts: 100 Member
    Different things work for different people.

    I also put a limit on how late I will eat – but considering I don’t usually go to bed until 11:30pm. I make mine 8p.m.

    There’s a lot of info out there – some say don’t eat after 6, some say it doesn’t matter at all, some say stop eating 2 to 4 hours before bed.

    Personally, I think the best thing anyone can do is to listen to your body!
    If you are hungry – eat….

    That being said, I think we often mistake true hunger for other things – boredom, stress, habit.

    When I want to eat something I try to decide if I actually feel hungry and how hungry I feel. I use a scale of 1 to 5 - 5 being I would chew my own hand off, and 1 being I’ll live, it just sounded good. If I’m a 1 to 3 I will try drinking a full 8 ounces of water before I eat, or just doing something else to take my mind off of it – If I’m still hungry then I try the 2 bites rule – just have a few bites of whatever it is you are craving.

    How many times do you eat a day?

    I try to eat small amounts 6 to 8 times a day.

    Water will help you to feel full as well eating a lot of protein…lean meats can make really good snacks.



    Good Luck!
    Hope you find what works for you!

    you nailed it!
  • SGT_Reg
    SGT_Reg Posts: 186 Member
    I ate a clementine at 20:00 the other night. I then ate another, then another, then I ate 4 or 5 more. Then I went to bed. That's a lot of sugar, but I had calories to spare and I really love clementines. Ad guess what, I didn't gain a bunch of weight, and I would do it again because it doesn't matter when you eat. It matters how much you eat and how much you move.
  • arcticfox04
    arcticfox04 Posts: 1,011 Member
    You can snack after 6pm. Just pre-log your food the day before to make room for it. I normally eat till 10pm normally and I lost 100lb's.
  • spamantha57
    spamantha57 Posts: 674 Member
    It doesn't matter what time you eat as as long as you space your calories out properly throughout the day.

    I'm never hungry in the morning & I can't go to sleep on an empty stomach or feeling hungry.

    "Breakfast" for me is usually green tea & a fiber bar. Small - medium lunch. Maybe a snack. Dinner for me isn't until like 8 or 9pm. I don't go to bed until about 1. I'll have something around 150 cals an hour or two before I go to sleep, like toast or the last of my dinner if I didn't finish it.
  • Bethbr00tality
    Bethbr00tality Posts: 36 Member
    What's wrong with eating after 6? I hate going to bed hungry. It doesn't matter when you eat as long as you stick to your calorie goal. The whole "eating right before bed is bad thing" is a myth.

    its not a myth if you eat crap before bed.

    Not a myth if you eat most of your calories before bed.

    YEP

    Um...still a myth. I eat close to (or over) 1000 calories within the hour before I go to bed (including a healthy dose of crap just before I go to sleep). I don't go over my calories for the day. See ticker for how it's working.

    What i'm saying is If you're not spacing out your calorie consumption throughout the day and eating 600-800 empty calories before bed (ie:junk food), you're not doing yourself any favors.
    And what I'm saying is....


    You're wrong.

    I'm wrong for suggesting the OP shouldn't binge before bed? Not once did I say to not snack after 6pm. I said to space it out. I said eating most of your calories before bed was a bad idea, as in binge eating. Because typically if someone is eating most of their calories in one go, it's binge eating.
  • ChrisC_77
    ChrisC_77 Posts: 271 Member
    .
    I have a BAD habit....I get this feeling of wanting a snack in the evening after 6ish. I eat a balance dinner and throughout the day I manage what I eat. What can I do to help to control this?

    If you are hungry. Have a light snack. And nothing sugary which will create a biochemical response that could make you even more hungry.

    Try like a small apple and a small serving of nuts. The fiber and protein in nuts are satisfying. Apples also have fiber and a lot of pectin which are both satisfying.
  • Sarauk2sf
    Sarauk2sf Posts: 28,072 Member
    What's wrong with eating after 6? I hate going to bed hungry. It doesn't matter when you eat as long as you stick to your calorie goal. The whole "eating right before bed is bad thing" is a myth.

    its not a myth if you eat crap before bed.

    Not a myth if you eat most of your calories before bed.

    YEP

    Um...still a myth. I eat close to (or over) 1000 calories within the hour before I go to bed (including a healthy dose of crap just before I go to sleep). I don't go over my calories for the day. See ticker for how it's working.

    What i'm saying is If you're not spacing out your calorie consumption throughout the day and eating 600-800 empty calories before bed (ie:junk food), you're not doing yourself any favors.
    And what I'm saying is....


    You're wrong.

    I'm wrong for suggesting the OP shouldn't binge before bed? Not once did I say to not snack after 6pm. I said to space it out. I said eating most of your calories before bed was a bad idea, as in binge eating. Because typically if someone is eating most of their calories in one go, it's binge eating.

    Eating most of your calories before bed is not a binge if it is planned, especially if it is within your calorie allowance for the day.
  • PhiSigAmber
    PhiSigAmber Posts: 44 Member
    When do you go to sleep? If you're cutting off food too early in the evening, you may be putting your body into starvation mode for too long. Maybe try having low-calorie, healthy snack about an hour before bed. That way you won't be so hungry and tempted to eat something "bad."

    To stop snacking altogether, I suggest brushing your teeth right after dinner. Seems to help me a bit.
  • msbunnie68
    msbunnie68 Posts: 1,894 Member
    You have set yourself a 'diet rule' of not eating after 6PM. By setting the rule you have made yourself food aware after 6PM. Telling yourself "i CAN'T eat it's after 6PM' makes your body crave it and it starts whispering "screw the rules...I want snacks!".

    Take away the rule. Pre-plan a small snack plate with a taste of things that fits into your calorie day. Save a little bit of your calorie allowance for the snack and you take away the forbidden part of it and therefore the guilt. Your body stops being naughty and whispering 'screw the rules' and starts to say 'yay...it's nibble plate time'.

    Setting too many rules and making food or timeslots the enemy is why so many people binge and fail. You set yourself too many tests with self control and you will fail some of those.
  • crisanderson27
    crisanderson27 Posts: 5,343 Member
    When do you go to sleep? If you're cutting off food too early in the evening, you may be putting your body into starvation mode for too long.


    This is incorrect as well. It takes over 72hrs with no food for your body to start making wholesale adjustments to your metabolism (meaning beyond the natural hour by hour fluctuations). If your starvation mode theory were valid, my poor metabolism would be shot after multiple years now of spacing my meal times as much as 16-24hrs apart.
  • frangru
    frangru Posts: 1
    stay out of the kitchen after you clean up after dinner. if your willpower is weak log onto myfitnesspal and look at your log. that extra time you take thinking about something else usually eliminates the thought of mindless snacking.

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