9pm Munchies

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Replies

  • LivingtheLeanDream
    LivingtheLeanDream Posts: 13,342 Member
    I always save calories for an evening snack but I can still find myself hungry. I go to bed a lot feeling hunger but it doesn't stop me from sleeping. Plus I find the next morning I'm not famished so I think the hunger feelings can be overcome - mind over matter etc.
  • kshama2001
    kshama2001 Posts: 28,053 Member
    kimny72 wrote: »
    lgfrie wrote: »
    I'm surprised no one has suggested this, but next time you're having a hunger pang at night just ... don't eat. In fact, don't eat anything at all until the next morning. If you can stomach that (so to speak) for a week or two, you may find yourself part of the teeming horde that has done away entirely with nighttime snacking by simply not eating.

    Once the brain and body figure out there's no food coming, they mostly stop being whiny about it.

    This is the whole secret of IF - your mind and body adjust to periods when they're not gonna get fed and largely quit protesting. And then ... you're free. It's very liberating, and great for weight loss.

    The key is to not give in. Be firm and don't let stomach juices make the rules. You make the rules.

    If you decide you don't like that or it doesn't work for you, you can always go back to snacking. The worst thing that can happen is you lose a few more ounces during this test.

    Yeah, unless your hunger is interfering with your ability to sleep, there is absolutely no harm that is going to come to someone because they're going to bed hungry (barring specific health conditions). I've gone to bed hungry before. I just wake up with a good appetite for breakfast.

    One of the biggest learnings I had in weight management -- hunger isn't harmful. It can be annoying and it can be distracting and most of us don't want to let it go on too long because it can lead to bad choices. But if I'm about to go to sleep, it's really not an issue for me.

    I'm one of those people where if I'm hungry, I struggle to fall asleep and an more likely to wake during the night. But I know other people who use that feeling of starting to get hungry as their reminder it's time to go to bed. So it's certainly worth trying out the possibility that it's something you can move past, especially if saving calories means you are hungrier all day or feeling deprived!

    Yes, I can't go to sleep hungry or hunger will wake me up and ruin my next day, so I budget for a bed time snack. I'm playing around with foods that will fill me up for less calories.
  • amy19355
    amy19355 Posts: 805 Member
    So I get home around 5 and eat dinner. I feel fine, then somewhere around 9pm I start craving a snack. It's very easy to walk to the convenience store near my house and buy a candy bar or bag of chips, etc. What are some tips I could follow to help with late night munchies, so I can hit my calorie goal and actually lose weight?

    spread your calorie allotment more evenly over the course of the day.

    breakfast , lunch and dinner are just labels for eating events.

    imo, you can eat what you want, when you want. I expect you already know that to lose weight is just to eat fewer calories than you burn through activity.

    gooid luck!
  • mimimunchery
    mimimunchery Posts: 69 Member
    I would be hungry after such an early dinner - so I would eat dinner later or have a snack. But when I get late night munchies shortly after eating and I am not really legitimately hungry my new trick is drinking some herbal tea (I LOVE stash cinnamon apple chamomile with a little bit of honey added).
  • fitoverfortymom
    fitoverfortymom Posts: 3,452 Member
    Go to bed. One of my best tactics during weight loss was to go to sleep so I didn't feel hungry. Only occasionally was I actually hungry enough to feel I needed to eat.
  • icemom011
    icemom011 Posts: 999 Member
    For me nightly snacks are more of a habit than hunger. Unfortunately, once that door opens, i want to try a little bit of everything in the house. Sometimes it's a few hours after dinner and I'm legit hungry, but most of the time i have dinner late, but still looking forward to snacks. I love my nightly treats too much. So my strategy is to have a small taste of everything I'm going to have, and after I'm done with sampling my treats i go to brush my teeth and that takes care of cravings. I also drink a couple of cups of nice herbal tea, but that's because i love tea but have to cut caffeine vat some point in the evening. There are days when I'm considering what @lgfrie suggested, which is a way to break the habit and probably build a better one. But for me it probably won't work, i prefer to learn moderation rather than abstain and i have already created a new habit of not having any snacks during the day, so i definitely have room for it. Everyone is different, try a new way, find what works for you, @Sophi_allheart .
  • cherys
    cherys Posts: 387 Member
    Big mug of fruit tea or large glass of iced water and a bowl of crudités (carrot sticks, celery sticks, cucumber sticks, red pepper slices, baby corn, sugar snap peas, chunks of iceberg.)
  • riffraff2112
    riffraff2112 Posts: 1,756 Member
    I don't get those craving like I used to, a bit of a blessing of getting older I guess (there has to be some advantages I guess :smile: )
    I used to eat half my supper at the regular time, and save the rest for my late night snack.
  • pokequeeen
    pokequeeen Posts: 9 Member
    I get them too around midnight. It's my cue to go to bed.
  • LaReinaDeCorazones
    LaReinaDeCorazones Posts: 274 Member
    I have cut out everything that I ate way too much of (i.e. bread, tortillas, pasta,sweets n chips) so I no longer have anything that I can go snack or binge on at night anymore. And shortly before bed I chug a few big cups of water so I feel full n bloated anyways.
  • MCEOCHAIDH
    MCEOCHAIDH Posts: 8 Member
    Typically, I find myself in the same boat. Sometimes it's out of habit, other times out of boredom. But what I find helps is to snack on celery sticks with mayo or to grate up some Parmesan cheese, roll it into balls then press it into discs and grill it on a non stick sheet until I end up with crispy Parmesan chips. Great if you're on Keto, no sugars just fats.
  • ValeriePlz
    ValeriePlz Posts: 517 Member
    I am a meditator and I like breathing through the hunger - focus on something else. Also if you practice intermittent fasting (or any kind of fasting), eventually you get through the acute hunger. I did the same thing that you're describing yesterday and was starving by 8, but then was OK when I went to bed at 10.
  • lightenup2016
    lightenup2016 Posts: 1,055 Member
    Agree with a lot of previous posts.

    I save calories for “late night”—between 200-350 calories for beer/wine and/or crackers and cheese, usually.

    Also, doing IF really showed me how hunger works (I started IF in 2013 before its popularity really boomed). The hunger pangs are temporary and I’m not wanting food as much if I just wait a bit. I actually enjoy the feeling of an empty stomach in the morning (I eat around 1pm). That being said, in the evenings I don’t fight it much, just use my saved calories.