9pm Munchies
Replies
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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.5 -
janejellyroll 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!5 -
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.2
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Exactly! I agree 1000000 %.
We Of A Certain BMI (mine was 47 when I started dieting, so ... pretty chunky) have a very direct, immediate response to hunger pangs. "I am hungry" -> must eat food.
As though something terrible would happen if the hunger pang was just allowed to ride. It's weird, because a thousand other little things happen to the body now and then and we're like "Oh, I'll keep an eye on that" or "Eh, I'll just ignore that" but as soon as we feel that little hunger signal in the pit of the stomach, it's like "FOOD. NOW."
When I started intermittent fasting in May, it was really the first time in my life that I was genuinely hungry without attempting to squash that feeling a.s.a.p. with food. I would eat dinner at 7 pm and then basically starve myself until the next morning, and the first few days were challenging. My mind and body were screaming for food. I toughed it out.
What I learned is, if you are hungry and don't eat, you don't turn into a pumpkin and you don't even necessarily get more hungry. In fact, the hunger pangs would pass and then I wouldn't be hungry At. All. And over a few weeks I stopped being hungry at all during the entire time I had assigned to Not-Eating: 7pm - 11 am. During that time, I had, and continue to have, virtually no appetite, and no interest in food. I cannot describe what a sea change that is for me.
I am not saying this would work for everyone. I'm not even saying it'd work for most people. But even if it'd work for 1/4 of the people, or 1/8th, I think it's a worthy thing to try for a week or two. Why? Because there is no cost. The worst thing that can happen is you feel a little hungry, lose an extra pound, and decide it's not for you.
I am a person who was ravenously hungry pretty much every hour of every day for my entire life. I was constantly eating and constantly hungry, and that is why, at peak, I was wearing jeans with a 50 inch waist. I'm pretty sure this fasting thing was the first time in my life I ever went serious stretches of time without food and I was stunned and amazed to learn that hunger pangs are temporary and the body (or brain, or whatever) will give up the fight if you just ignore their whining. 10 or 15 minutes later - no hunger pangs, and no calories consumed. But it did take a few weeks for everything to get retrained to be at that point. I am not saying this discovery occurs in 5 minutes, more like it develops over a few weeks, at least for me.
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janejellyroll 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.1 -
Sophi_allheart wrote: »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!
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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).2
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@lgfrie
Great post just above.
Hunger is temporary.
So true. Well done for figuring it out and for putting it to words so well. Hunger Does Pass. It's merely an adaptation to habit and/or time. I'm in no danger of actual starvation in a First World country. I can go to bed when I've eaten my XXXX amount for the day, regardless of "feeling" hungry.
Feelings aren't facts. After years of giving myself food at every thought of food I also found myself at BMI Obese.
Never again. Not on my watch.
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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.4
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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 .0
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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.)0
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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
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I used to eat half my supper at the regular time, and save the rest for my late night snack.
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I get them too around midnight. It's my cue to go to bed.1
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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.1
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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.1
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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 10.1
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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.3
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