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8 Things You Didn’t Know About Night Eating

Night eating is a bad habit to get into because you don’t leave enough time before going to bed to digest your food well.

Night eating can lead to snacking and eating mostly junk food that can destroy your sleep. If you’re trying to find ways to stop eating at night, consider the following steps in your efforts.

1. Balance your hormones

It’s not an emotional issue or your character that you have to fix. It’s not some psychological trauma that you have to get over (although for some, eating at night is triggered by stress). It’s just biology. All you have to do is to find out why these changes happen in your body to make you crave food late at night, and when you do, you can overcome them. These hormones include: insulin, leptin, ghrelin, and peptide YY.

2. Find your food sensitivities

People don’t know this, but you often crave the foods you’re allergic or sensitive to. And dairy and gluten are among the biggest triggers for food sensitivity. Try to avoid these foods for a few weeks and see if your cravings stop.

3. Make sure you eat regularly

Have at least 3 meals during the day: breakfast, lunch, and dinner. If you want to eat a snack in between, that’s fine, but make sure you eat all your meals at regular rhythms and regular times. Your body is a hormonal clock, and you have to eat in the same time to keep it in balance.

4. Find your pause button and soothe the stress

Stress makes you fat (and overeat); relaxing makes you lose weight. Learn to find your pause button and chose your favorite way of dealing with stress. Breathing, yoga, and exercise are the most common ways to reduce stress, which helps reset your hormones, balance you brain chemistry, and in that way stop the cravings.

5. Prioritize sleep

If you don’t sleep enough, you will feel hungry, especially for sugar and carbs. Why? Because when you deprive yourself of sleep, PYY (the hormone that makes you feel full) and ghrelin (the hormone that drives hunger goes up), lowers. So, if you want to lose weight, sleep more.

6. Don’t drink your calories

If you consume sugary, liquid calories in the form of iced teas, juices, lattes, sodas, or sports drinks, it will spike your insulin levels and blood sugar and will cause cravings.

7. Have protein and good-quality fat at every meal

Good fats are coconut, olive oil, nuts and seeds, avocados, or quality protein like fish, grass-fed meat or chicken. Some combination of these (plus lots of veggies) balances your blood sugar.

8. Eat breakfast

This is the most important way to stop the night cravings. Of course, if you eat at night, you’ll probably skip your breakfast, because when you wake up, you are still full. So, you have to break this habit and start your day with breakfast: a good, protein breakfast. You should eat eggs in any form you like: as an omelet, fried, or poached. Eggs are high in protein that helps balance your blood sugar. Be sure to eat whole eggs, not just egg whites.