Night Time Binge Eating

I'm in the same boat as you. Night time sabotages my entire day. I'm not really hungry, I just eat. In my past experience you just need to suffer through and fight the nightime binge cravings. If you do, it will eventually get better over time. You just need to take the first step and then stick to it. Also, replace whatever you're bingeing on with some low cal snacks like popcorn.

I'm pretty much echoing others' responses here but I think it can be good to experiment with different mealtimes and calorie counts, snacking vs. no snacking, etc.

Pre-MFP, I tried to eat 3 main meals that were all on the smaller side and then 2 small snacks during the day and 1 at night. I never really felt full and I always felt like I was "dieting" and wanted to snack more & more.

I came to realize that for me personally, it's pretty important to have a larger lunch and dinner. I eat 80-90% of my daily calories between those two meals and generally do not snack and have a small breakfast (which I find very satisfying). It is amazing to me how different I feel if I (for example) eat a light ~300 calorie lunch, I feel tired & crave just about everything under the sun by 2 or 3 pm. But when I eat 400-600 at lunch, making sure to include plenty of protein, I feel energetic & full and don't even think about food all afternoon. I find that I am very satisfied without snacks when I eat larger (for me) meals.

Silly perhaps but I also like to floss, brush, etc, shortly after dinner so I feel like I'm done eating for that day.

I know other people on these forums who are completely the opposite and strongly prefer "mini meals" throughout each day with only one (or NO) larger meal at all. Find what works best for you and I bet you will know it when you figure it out.

“I'm averaging about 2500, mostly from night time grazing. I'm exercising enough I'm meeting my daily goal, but I need to do MUCH better with my nutrition.”

Hey PBPunisher, I feel your pain. I used to do the same thing. I would have 300-500 cal “healthy” meals, 3 times a day and then at night have an insatiable appetite where I would binge eat anything I could find. This ultimately resulted in a nasty guilt phase and self loathing phase. I started purging after the episodes of night time weakness. Then after seeing a psychiatrist I was prescribed Prozac for my new bulimia eating disorder. This medication killed my sex drive and any really passion for life, but managed to curb my nighttime cravings. It also had a significant price tag for a broke university student.

That’s when I came across Jason Fung’s book ‘The Obesity Code’. I highly recommend this book as it changed my life and that of many others. I am off the drugs and off the nighttime fridge prowl. Fung talks a lot about the multitude of health benefits associated with intermittent fasting (IF). For me the benefits of IF were getting control of my food cravings and my weight. I’m off the antidepressants and in control of my appetite. A big surprise for me was learning about how a calorie deficit is not sustainable because of the way the body ‘resets’ its base metabolic rate (BMR) after a period of continuous deficiency. I also learned a lot about how the type of food when you’re not fasting is equally important.

Here is an article on Fung’s website, Intensive Dietary Management (IDM) that talks about the dangers of restricting calories. I think this was my issue and you may relate to it as well. https://idmprogram.com/difference-calorie-restriction-fasting-fasting-27/

Hope this helps ❤️