4 Common Causes of Nighttime Eating and How to Effectively Manage Them

Nighttime eating is a major concern for many people who have a conflicted and difficult relationship with food. Nighttime eating typically indicates one of the following imbalances:

1.    Nighttime eating may indicate that you are a chronic dieter. If you significantly restrict calories your body will crave nutrients and calories at the end of the day.

2.    Nighttime eating may indicate that your blood sugar is out of balance. This will cause cravings at the end of the day. 

3.    Nighttime food cravings can indicate that you are an emotional eater. Unstructured time in the evening can trigger emotions and stress that cause uncontrollable emotional food cravings.

4.    Nighttime eating may indicate that you are stuck in a deeply engrained habit pattern of eating at night that can be effectively changed with desire and effort.

If you struggle with nighttime food cravings and nighttime eating, it is most likely a combination of more than one of the above possible reasons. 

Let’s begin by addressing nighttime eating problem number one. Restricting calories during the day and the chronic dieting mentality can cause intense food cravings. Here’s the thing, dieting is not a sustainable form of weight loss—in fact—studies show that chronic dieting causes weight gain! The weight loss industry has based their marketing on the premise that they can make you feel as though you do not know how or what to eat. The dieting industry makes you feel as though you are out of control and in need of someone or something else to be in charge of your food intake. While this may work temporarily (for weight loss, NOT necessarily for health), what happens when the diet is over? (Hint: usually a dangerous cycle of binge eating or overeating after an extended time of feeling deprived.)

If you have been significantly restricting your caloric intake, please know that it is simply not realistic long-term. If you find that you are hungry and unable to resist eating at night when you have restricted your food intake during the day, you are most likely having these strong cravings because you are indeed hungry! You also may be having these strong cravings because your body is trying to communicate to you that you are even malnourished. Your body is most likely craving energy and nourishment and your “self-control” reserves have been depleted and you find yourself eating and most likely in an out of control manner.

The most effective way to remedy this is to STOP DIETING! Start eating real, nutritious whole foods and begin to focus on healing your relationship with food through mindful and intuitive eating practices. Stop restricting and begin focusing on why you want a certain food and if that food serves your health and wellness goals. You can begin to add more nutrition to each meal during the day and notice if that helps reduce your cravings in the evening. Chronic dieting can contribute to blood sugar imbalances as well, which leads us to nighttime eating cause number two!

If your blood sugar is out of balance, it can cause strong food cravings at the end of the day. One cause for this imbalance can be when you start the day with a high amount of carbohydrates and sugars. This will spike your blood sugar early in the day and cause residual cravings all day long. The primary remedy for this is to add protein to your breakfast to help stabilize blood sugar throughout the day. Another way to manage blood sugar imbalance is to minimize taking in excess sugar, processed foods and certain carbohydrates (without being entirely or overly restrictive.) Balancing protein and fiber will help as well—vegetables that are loaded with fiber like leafy greens eaten with a healthy protein source can be very stabilizing and satiating.

Possible cause number three is emotional eating, which is often a major contributor to nighttime eating. Unstructured time in the evening can trigger many feelings. Some of the most common feelings that trigger nighttime eating are: stress, anxiety, boredom and loneliness. The most effective way to begin to manage emotional eating is to have a healthy, non-food-based outlet for your emotions. If you would like more guidance and support surrounding emotional food cravings you can check out my blog on the 5 stages of awareness here to guide you through becoming more emotionally aware. I also have several blogs dedicated to understanding and releasing emotional cravings and emotional awareness and food cravings, you can check out one here.

Emotional eating is complex and may be an area where you could benefit from support by working with a therapist. However, giving yourself an outlet will help to identify the feeling and then make a choice on how to respond to the feeling. Once you can recognize, name and understand the trigger for the emotion you are experiencing, you can create a new outlet for your emotions. Learning to be present with them rather than eating them away and numbing them out with food is essential. This part of the process is definitely not easy. Give yourself time to process your feelings through journaling, talking about them, and/or doing something creative to release them in order to have a place for them to be acknowledged, respected, understood and released.

Now onto scenario number four, nighttime eating as a long-standing habit. If you have had the habit of having a bowl of popcorn and a glass of wine while unwinding in the evening or having dessert every night regardless of whether or not you are hungry, this can indeed be a difficult habit to break. Creating a new habit takes time, effort, discipline and consistency to make happen.

You can begin by identifying the habit you want to change and determine your WHY. Why do you want to change this habit? Make it something that is truly important to you and involves your personal values. It is helpful to remind yourself of your personal WHY continually to remain motivated to maintain this change. Determine what you’d like to do instead of your typical nighttime eating habit. Preplanning an alternative to eating in order to take away the challenge of having to force yourself in the moment will help you to change this habit. Maybe you’d like to have a cup of tea, journal, read, knit—whatever it is—set yourself up for success by having this new evening habit ready to access.

Commit to one month of changing this habit. At the end of the month, take time to reflect on how it goes. What has changed? How did this change impact you? How did it impact your health? How did it impact your self-esteem and your self-image? This is important stuff to notice! Not to sound like a broken record, but I will anyway—if you are truly hungry, allow yourself to eat—just ensure you are not mindlessly eating out of habit, boredom or otherwise.

Nighttime eating is pervasive and many of us struggle with this challenge and yet most people don’t share this struggle with others. Many people feel ashamed and maybe attempt to hide it. Awareness is the first step. If you feel you could benefit from support, reach out! Finding Freedom From Emotional Eating Online Course will help support you through challenges such as nighttime eating and emotional eating! You can learn more about this course here.

I hope these methods help to bring more awareness to the why behind any nighttime eating and that these steps will help you begin or continue your journey to make peace with food as well as with yourself.

How Small Steps Can Lead to Big Change

When you set out to create change in your life it can be tempting to want to do a complete overhaul. However, these complete overhaul attempts are often met with an inability to sustain for the long-term. The attempts to completely overhaul your life are often too overwhelming, too time-consuming or just completely unrealistic and perpetuate an “all-or-nothing” notion to change. This is why small steps, when taken consistently, can lead to BIG-time change. 

When you set out to create change, there will inevitably be some type of internal resistance. This is why it is so valuable and imperative to arm yourself with a specific goal, action steps and a PLAN to take action. When you create a plan, you set a specific and useful path to move through your resistance. Taking action consistently will help to alleviate fear, resistance and ultimately create the change you desire. 

Begin by considering what it is you want (if you are not sure, you can work through these five questions here) and write it down. Now identify the specifics of what you want and why you want it (you can learn more about determining your WHY here.) What is one thing you can do to move yourself in the direction of the change you desire? If your goal is health and wellness related, such as to “get healthy,” it will be helpful to break it down. What does “get healthy” mean to you? Does this only carry the image of working out for hours and hours and eating only salad and apples? Does it look like scary, like deprivation and struggle? I can tell you, that will not work and definitely will not last.

If your desire is to “get healthy” then why? Is your overriding vision longevity, vitality and the absence of illness throughout your life. If so, what one area of health you can identify that will set your course to create that possibility? What is one goal that will support your vision? An example of a goal that encourages starting small is to eat one leafy green vegetable every day. An example of an action step that supports this goal is to identify leafy green veggies that you actually like. A second example of an action step is to purchase the veggie. A third example of an action step that supports this goal would be to find a recipe to use this green. One last example of an action step that supports this goal is to evaluate how you feel after adding in a leafy green veggie every day.

The way to remain consistent (even if you don’t feel like eating that leafy green vegetable today) is to have a plan. Your plan to ensure that you will take action could be writing down what meal you will eat the leafy green vegetable and how it will be prepared. The plan can also include preparing the leafy greens ahead of meal time so they are ready to go into the recipe. If you are tired and have to wash a bunch of veggies, or even cook them, you may not follow through. This is where your plan holds your power.

This simple, yet wonderfully healthy and powerful change of adding in one leafy green vegetable per day will begin to transform your health by adding in nutrients without having to do a complete overhaul. Once you have met this goal—you are adding in a leafy green every day without having to think about it—then you can consider the next small step you will take. Such as, do you want to incorporate more movement into your day, do you want to decrease the amount of sugar in your daily diet, do you want to add in a mindfulness practice?

Imagine if you took whatever your initial goal may have been and cut it in half, (and then maybe cut it in half again!) you began there at this more doable half of your goal and allowed it to fully integrate into your daily routine? What impact would that one small step have on your life today? What impact will it have in six months from now when you’ve been able to integrate two or three new small steps? What impact will it have on your life it you don’t integrate any change at all?

Often the message we receive from media and otherwise is that we can have it all, do it all, be it all…and yet the reality of your life, schedule and demands are not taken into consideration. When you take charge of the change you desire and move forward one small step at a time you create progress. When you make progress, it feels really good, it is rewarding in and of itself and creates a desire to move forward with another small step.

The all-or-nothing mentality is not healthy and not realistic. Begin by knowing and then breaking down what you want. Identify the areas of your life that will need to adjust and make room for this small change. Ask yourself, what would my life look like in six months if I don’t create this change, am I ok with that? Then begin with your ONE small step, break it down and make it doable to assure that it fits into the structure of your life. Create your plan of action to ensure that you move forward and make the progress you desire.

Re-evaluate your goals and action steps regularly and know that change is most sustainable when created over time with a sense of ease and balance. What is one small change you can add today? Start there and ease into health and wellness over time. If you make a decision about the one small change you can make today to create the life you want, let me know! I’d love to hear how your one small change impacts your life in a BIG way!

The Power of Your Food Story

When you embark on the path to heal your relationship with food, knowing, writing, telling and finding insights from your personal food story can be an extremely enlightening part of the process. Allowing yourself to learn, access and heal your relationship with food by exploring the points of origination throughout your life where your relationship with food went awry in the first place. When you witness your own story, you are able to learn, grow and begin to heal your relationship with food from the deepest roots.

We all have a food story. We all received messages from those around us, the media, and other influences about food and how it should or shouldn’t make us feel, look or be. We all have emotional triggers that run quite deep. Food may have been used as a punishment or reward as child in an attempt to control your behavior. You may have been told to clean your plate or that there were starving children who would be grateful to eat whatever was left on your plate—implying how ungrateful you are for your full belly or maybe the undesired vegetables.

These are examples, and while they may be fairly common, remember, when you set out to write your personal food story and learn from your history with food it can bring up ALL kinds of feelings, memories and sensations. You may struggle with feelings of guilt because you do not want to place blame on others. It may bring up uncomfortable feelings towards a family member because you feel a certain way about a particular message you received from a parent, sibling, friend or bully. The fact is, no matter if your family did the best they could with what they had (or not), that does not mean that what they did was what you needed or didn’t create some of the root struggles of your relationship with food.

Just because someone may not have meant to create or exacerbate a complicated relationship with food for you, that does not mean that what they did, said—or maybe didn’t do or didn’t say—didn’t cause conflicting messages for you. They may not have meant to have caused you to experience feelings that impacted how you felt about food, yourself and your body, which ultimately deeply impacted your self-image and self-esteem. Just because a parent or someone else may not have intended to create discomfort in your life does not mean that they were able to meet your needs. Acknowledging this is a part of the healing process. Acknowledging these harsh truths allow you to empower yourself as you move forward.

While you may not want to place “blame” on someone else for your struggles, the awareness that what did or didn’t happen in your past allows you to learn, grow and make changes in the here and the now. A major part of becoming a “grown-up” is learning to re-parent yourself where your needs were not met. Maybe you were not given the opportunity to learn self-regulation skills and you had whatever you wanted whenever you wanted it. Maybe the emphasis on food was that it is a treat or a reward. This may have caused you to have a difficult time with self-regulation around food including mindset, planning and follow through. Or maybe you grew up in a rigid environment where everything was OFF-LIMITS, causing an equally troublesome message about food. All of these experiences can impact how you interact with your life, including how you view, interact with and feel towards food to this day.

If you grew up without examples of self-regulation you may feel as though it is difficult to assess your hunger and full cues, to not feel deprived and resentful if you choose NOT to eat a desirable food—even if you are not hungry—or it may be overwhelming to plan your meals—or even a grocery list—and stick to it. If you grew up in a rigid environment when it came to food choices, you may have adopted a “FORGET-IT” attitude where you feel as though you are asserting yourself as an adult to eat whatever you want whenever you want it. It could also be that the rigidity has caused a fear of food, calories, weight, and body-judgment from others.

BOTH of these experiences can be met with desiring change, a desire for a different way to be with food—to be with yourself. Both of these examples of possible experiences from your youth can deeply impact how you interact with food, your body and your life to this day.

There are many other common messages you may have received surrounding food, such as: food is love “I made this just for you”—or, food is comfort: “I knew you had a bad day so I made you your favorite ____________”—or, food is a reward: “You did such a great job on ______________ I made you this treat to celebrate!” These are just a few examples of how messages can be received that can create dysfunction within your relationship with food, especially if it is already complicated!

More subtle messages man be in the mix as well, such as a parent who feeds the family but was always on a diet and they restrict their portions or eat different foods from the family at mealtimes. Or, maybe if your family perceived your body to be overweight, they may have put you on an undesired diet or worse, even locked food away restricting what you could and couldn’t eat. This may have caused a desire to hide, sneak and steal food, eating it in secret. No matter what messages you received about food—or your body—the impact runs deep and creates complication in the process of making peace with food.

This is where writing your food story—your personal history with food—can be enlightening, empowering and freeing. Writing your food story is an exercise I have in my book, Wholistic Food Therapy and I wanted to share it here as it is an incredibly important part of your healing journey.

To begin, think about your history with food. Consider the various messages you received about food and your body that were both direct and indirect. Spend time identifying emotions that drive you to desire comforting foods. Consider memories or phrases you heard that impacted you and how you felt about food and your body. Spend time journaling and writing it out for as long as it takes.

When you complete your story, review it. If there were some particularly challenging moments you came across, picture that version of yourself and offer that picture in your mind of yourself kindness and compassion. Acknowledge that your needs were not necessarily met and as an adult you will empower yourself to meet your own needs. Thank yourself for putting in this powerful effort to heal from the deepest roots, to face and release old messages, thoughts, feelings and experiences.

When you are working towards healing and change, awareness is always the first step. Acknowledge how this increased awareness can help you change as you move forward from this process of examining your food history and writing your food story. It may be helpful to tell your story to someone you trust, someone you do not fear will judge you. Having your story to be witnessed by another is powerfully healing, and you never know how your story may inspire another person.  

I’d love to hear your story! This process is covered in depth in my online course, Freedom From Emotional Eating. If you are ready to immerse yourself in a process towards healing your relationship with food, you can check it out on my courses page to learn more!

I look forward to walking with you along your path to healing your relationship with food.