Night time cravings

Hot tea? Drink a huge glass of water or start doing something to take your mind off eating?

What does your eating look like through the day? Are you keeping calories so low during the day that by evening you're starving?

What calorie target are you shooting for?

Do you eat breakfast or skip breakfast? Are you hungry when you eat breakfast, if you do?

If you're willing to share your age, weight, height, and goal weight, those facts would be helpful.

How is your sleep, and how is your stress level?

Our bodies can respond to fatigue with a sensed need for energy, and food is energy. So, fatigue can mean cravings.

Late in the day, we normally are more fatigued. If sleep quality is poor, or quantity is inadequate, that effect - the fatigue/cravings effect - can become larger.

If you're in a calorie deficit, that's a physical stress. If you're in a big calorie deficit, or you've been in a deficit pretty steadily for a long time, the cumulative stress can increase. Add some life stress, and the stress itself can reach a breaking point, and either on its own or via stress-induced fatigue, lead to cravings.

If you've been at the weight loss process for a while, another possibility is that your weight loss rate has become too aggressive for your now smaller body size, i.e., you're trying to lose too fast, so eating too little, and your body is rebelling.

Is there any chance that habit or boredom are an element, for you? If so, then it's usually easier to replace an old and undesired habit with a new and desired one, vs. "just try to stop". For example, if someone has a habit of snacking while watching TV in the evening, they might try something like needlework to keep their hands busy, or stretching during the show. If the issues is potentially boredom, then starting a new, distracting hobby, or resuming an old one, can be a useful thing. (Especially good are things that require clean hands, like needlework, sketching, or playing a musical instrument; or things that create dirty hands, like painting, gardening, or carpentry.)

It's certainly true for me that experimenting with my eating timing and composition was helpful in reducing evening cravings, as others have suggested. For me, perversely enough, getting a solid breakfast with plenty of protein was a key factor in reducing evening cravings, and it helped a bit to spread more protein through the day, too.

Best wishes!

I have the same night time craving for sweets. I dont keep sweets in the house, since I know I’ll give in, but I do let myself have a night time snack - usually I go with cocoa or a banana with PB. I pre-log this and wait until I’m no longer full from dinner (usually 9pm or so) before I eat it. Some nights I don’t crave it, so I’ll skip it and take it off my diary the next day. But leaving the door open for a little something makes it easier for me not to go overboard.

I also find that keeping my total sugar consumption as low as possible, and even avoiding artificial sweeteners, reduces my sugar cravings.

I was really struggling with this recently and realized that part of the problem was with my dinner. I was eating too many potatoes (or rice etc.) and not enough protein and veggie. I reduced the starch and increased both lean protein and higher fiber vegetables and found some improvement. I also have started using sugar free lower fat yogurt for a snack after dinner which seems to help as well. Good luck.

EmergencyGraphics wrote: »

Thanks for all the great ideas. Reading through all the suggestions, I'm realizing its a boredom thing. I'm not hungry, I'm bored. My schedule has recently changed, I normally work 2 or 3 jobs but right now I'm only working one so I'm home earlier at night. Last night my volleyball group started playing again and I had no problems. So I need to find some new hobbies.

Sometimes it is really difficult to determine whether it is true hunger, boredom, or habit. You have overcome huge barrier in determining that it is boredom. I was going to suggest getting up and finding something to do before giving in to cravings. That's what I usually try...drink water, have a cup of tea, or find something semi-active to do. Seems like you are on the correct mindset to overcome your night time cravings!