Ever find yourself ravenous after dinner?
Nighttime snacking is a huge problem that affects a lot of people and can sabotage both your health and weight loss goals.
For a lot of people eating late at night or before bed is probably something that feels good or even comforting to you. That’s because you’ve made nighttime snacking a habit. Your brain likes habits because it makes things easier, something I talk about in my book Unbreakable.
Here is why you can’t stop nighttime snacking and 4 things you can do to fix it:
Nighttime snacking Tip #1 | Understand your trigger
It probably looks something like this, you plop down on the couch after putting the kids to bed and reach for the remote to put on your favourite show. Grabbing the remote is your trigger that triggers your brain into thinking ‘hmm it’s time for a snack. It’s an association that your brain has made.
So what you need to do is create new habits that will help you to eat healthier. There are 5 common habit triggers that I talk about in my book Unbreakable but one of the most popular ones is location. Before I got a handle on my bad habits, I always kept cookies in plain sight on my kitchen counter. This made it so easy to fuel my nighttime snacking habit. Sometimes I ate them not because I wanted them but because they were there right in front of me. If you can relate, then you understand the power of location.
Location or environment is one of the most powerful triggers of bad or mindless habits so much so that chapter 4 of my book is largely devoted to helping you tackle this sneaky trigger.
People don’t understand what their triggers are that cause them to overeat or have bad habits and this is where people get tripped up the most. So what can you do?
Nighttime snacking Tip #2 | Have protein and good-quality fat at every meal
Good fats are nuts and seeds, avocados, coconut, olive oil, or quality protein like chicken, fish, or grass-fed meat. Some combination of these (plus lots of vegetables) balances your blood sugar. Eat these foods throughout the day and especially at dinner so that your body has what it needs to leave you feeling satisfied through the night which will help to minimize nighttime snacking.
Nighttime snacking Tip #3 | Find your pause button and soothe the stress
Stress makes you fat (and overeat); relaxing makes you thin. Learn to find your pause button and de-stress. I encourage you to look at some of the recipes on my website that contain nutrients that will help to reduce stress. Meditation, yoga, and exercise are some of my favorite ways to reduce stress, which helps reset the hormones, balance brain chemistry, and stop the cravings and nighttime snacking.
Nighttime snacking Tip #4 | Prioritize sleep
If you don’t sleep, you will be hungry, especially for carbs and sugar. Why? Because when you deprive yourself of sleep, ghrelin, the hormone that drives hunger goes up and PYY, the hormone that makes you feel full, goes down. So, if you want to lose weight, sleep it off.