There are two kinds of night eaters. One is a person who sleep walks to the kitchen and eats large amounts of food without any knowledge or memory of it. This is a sleep/eating disorder, and not one I am qualified to comment on.
Who I’m writing about is a person who eats in the evening, for no reason other than it became a habit that could be triggered from a variety of circumstances.
Causes of Night Eating
boredom
stress
skipping dinner
anger
sadness
anxiety
loneliness
association with an activity like TV watching
Being a night eater might convince you that you should eat a light supper, knowing you’ll be snacking later. When you do this, snacking feels justified, but snack foods are generally highly processed foods and tend to cause cravings for more. Processed foods are mostly carb based and will negatively affect your blood sugar and weight over time.
Night eating may also cause you to not feel very hungry in the morning. When weight starts to climb from night eating, it’s easy to think that skipping breakfast is a good idea, especially if you’re not hungry, thinking you can “save” your calories for later in the day. If you eat very little in the early part of the day, by the time you get to your night snacking you will have little or no resistance to those snack foods. You will be making it hard on yourself and this will lead to nothing good.
Night eating is only good for one person - the Sumo wrestler. They intentionally eat at night so they can gain weight and remain heavy. It’s part of their tradition.
Break the Cycle
You want to change your ways. You want to stop the night eating and the weight it’s added to your waistline. You also want to sleep better. Here’s what to do:
Stop buying the snack foods. You can’t eat what isn’t there. You might want to still have something to eat at night. Replace the snack foods with fruit that you enjoy, a cup of tea or water with lemon.
Change your evening routine. Doing the same thing every night makes it hard to alter any part of it. If you’ve been snacking while watching TV, put some music on and read some nights. If you love your night TV, add a hobby to your watching. like knitting, wood carving, drawing. or anything where you keep your hands busy.
Be mindful of your goals. Do you want to stop night eating? What do you need to do to be successful? Can you envision how being successful with make you feel?
On average it takes 21 days to break a habit. Set a start date and get to work on making a change that will help you sleep better, lose weight and most of all, feel you have conquered a harmful habit once and for all.