6 Strategies To Help Stop Late Night Eating and Food Cravings
We have all been there.
it’s dark outside, it’s been a stressful day, and you’re lying in bed listening to one thing.
The rumble in your tum tum.
And as you pay more attention to it, the louder it gets. You then get up and head towards the light.
Like a person possessed. Your brain is screaming: “NO”. But your legs are just walking slowly but surely down the stairs, and towards the light.
You almost try to convince yourself that you will choose something “good” as with each step you justify your legs moving you towards the light.
You get there.
Your arm is on auto-pilot.
The hum is almost soothing, and the light is not too bright….and not too dark. It’s as mesmerising as a flame to a moth.
And before you made a single conscious decision you have already eaten the Milkybar Yoghurt that was just calling your name less than 20 seconds ago.
And as your scrape your tongue on the bottom of the plastic tub, making sure that you do not want to waste a single drop of that Milklybar goodness…the guilt, fear, and worry start to set in:
“Oh my god I’ve totally screwed up”
“Why am I a total failure?”
“I have no self-control”
“I’m never going to conquer this”
“Why am I such a slob?”
“What is wrong with me?”
And the blame game with the self sets in, and then the whole process is repeated.
So here are my top 6 Strategies to help you stop late-night eating and food cravings!
Briefly, before I begin I want to address the issue of “Does Late Night Snacking Lead To Weight Gain?”.
No. It doesn’t from a purely scientific and objective point of view.
The Calories in a Banana do not change between 18:58 and 19:02 on a Wednesday night.
Calories are Calories are Calories.
As this Instagram Post on my Page, points out:
But from a Human Perspective…ask yourself what kind of foods are you eating late at night? I’m pretty sure it’s not Apples and Oranges.
As this Instagram Post explains:
When Calories are controlled, timings of food make no difference to your overall success or not in Weight Loss.
There are arguments to be made for how eating later at night might affect your circadian rhythm, stress resistance and Gut Health. But this doesn’t change the caloric make up of the food and how your body processes the energy from food at night as opposed to during the day, it just influences your ability to stick to a Calorie Deficit over time.
However, late at night, staring into the fridge, you are less likely to be making decisions that are congruent to your Calorie Window and therefore congruent to your goals.
So bear that in mind. Please.
Table of Contents for: “6 Strategies To Help Stop Late Night Eating and Food Cravings”
Eat More Calories
Eat more protein
Eat more Fibre and Drink More Water
Get More Sleep
Lower Stress and Anxiety and Boredom
Stop restricting yourself to lose weight
Eat More Calories
Yup. I said it. You need to eat more.
That might be a little too much….but the image will stick in your head for sure!
According to a paper called The Biology of Binge Eating, 2010, Food Deprivation is a key indicator of Binge Eating Disorder.
The 2010 paper wanted “to examine the literature on binge eating to gain a better understanding of its biological foundations and their role in the eating disorders” [1]
And in the section relating to Food Deprivation it concluded:
“Rats maintained on a restricted feeding schedule, during which they receive 66% of the amount of food that free eating rats consume, increase their caloric intake by 42% compared with sated rats when allowed ad lib access to food. Increased consumption is evident within 2 hours of the return of the food and persists for up to 4 hours (Hagan et al., 2003). This increased consumption over a discrete period of time mirrors behaviors seen in humans who binge eat.” [1]
Ergo, just a 44% reduction in your calories, can lead to a 42% increase in caloric intake.
Don’t worry, I’m not about to renege on my stance of a Calorie Deficit being required to lose weight, but I am going to hammer home the point, your Calorie Deficit must be built on certain foundations to make sure that you can adhere to it in the long term, and not feel overly restricted, leading to a Binge Episode further down the track.
These principles are outlined by my Five Awesome Rules For Fat Loss Life:
And many of these will re-occur in this article. But the most important one is to make sure your Deficit is not too aggressive.
It is far far better to have slow sustainable progress that gives you flexibility and doesn’t lead you on a path to undercutting your psychological progress by falling into a trap of Binge Eating at night than to get aggressive results that you know are not sustainable.
Your Calorie Deficit should at a minimum be set to your Basal Metabolic Rate, and at a maximum at your Goal Bodyweight in LBS multiplied by 12.
To make sure you get that in place - download my Free Calorie Calculator right here.
Yes, by eating more, your weight loss will happen at a reduced rate. But this reduced rate will also allow for:
The flexibility you need as a human being who has emotions.
You to build muscle and improve your Basal Metabolic Rate whilst still in deficit
Greater adherence to actually being in a Calorie Deficit
Late-night snacking so very often comes from a place of restriction throughout the day - and this wouldn’t be so bad if, at night you ate foods congruent to your goals. However quite often late at night…you aren’t snacking on Apples and Broccolli. Due to the restriction throughout the day, you get cravings for foods that are a lot more palatable - and often a lot higher in calories.
This is due to a number of factors, but one obvious one is, come to the end of the day, you are out of energy - and therefore convenience becomes king. Convenient foods are far higher in calories - and far tastier.
Which then puts you into a cycle of craving said foods more the following day…and so it continues.
This study found when they took 20 weight-stable adults and split them into two groups. One group was given an ultra-processed diet and the other an unprocessed diet for 2 weeks. Subjects were told to consume as much or as little as desired. Rather unsurprisingly, the Group that was given the Ultra Processed DIet consumed on average 508kcal/day more with increased consumption of carbohydrates and fat, but not Protein. [2]
This brings me nicely to my next Strategy for you:
2. Eat more Protein
In terms of quelling hunger and regulating appetite, Protein has two main roles.
It makes you feel fuller for longer
It lowers your desire to eat late at night
In this study from 2011, the researchers took 27 overweight or obese men, split them into two groups. Group One was given a Higher Protein (HP) Diet at 25% of energy as Protein, and Group 2 was given a Normal Protein (NP) Diet at 14% of energy as Protein.
The study concluded the following:
“When compared to NP, the HP group experienced lower late-night desire to eat and preoccupation with thoughts of food”
and,
“Collectively, this data supports the consumption of HP intake, but not greater eating frequency, for improved appetite control and satiety in overweight/obese men during energy restriction-induced weight loss” [3]
I often feel that when we discuss eating more protein, you think it has to be the dominant component of your diet. This isn’t true. As you can see from the study above Protein consumption was still only a quarter of dietary intake and garnered great results for halting late-night snacking.
To figure out your Protein Intake I would recommend you download my Calorie and Macro Calculator here: Free Macro Calculator
However, if you want to know the numbers without doing that they are as follows:
Eat 0.8g-1.1g of Protein each day per LB of Lean Body Mass.
However those numbers can be quite hard to achieve, and thus if you start by aiming for just 100g a day if you eat meat, and 80g a day if you don’t then you should be in a pretty good place.
If you would like some more help with your diet and your training then get my Ultimate Guide to your Diet when Working Out:
3. Eat more Fibre and Drink More Water
If you have read a number of my Blogs you will know that I discuss this a lot.
And the prevalence of it is extremely important. Not just if you are wanting to lose weight, but to also curb those late-night snacks.
In terms of Fibre, you want to be keeping this as a key feature of your diet - think of it as the “other Macro-Nutrient”.
Research in Fibre is ever-evolving, and I have it on good authority that what we thought we knew about Fibre may well develop deeper very soon.
Fibre has the ability to do two things that will help curb your hunger:
High Fibre intake stretches the stomach and slows its emptying rate - therefore making you feel fuller for longer
Fibre also ferments in the Bowel, which is thought to increase feelings of fullness as it releases short-chain fatty acids.
Then if we look at this in the context of your goal to lose weight, being fuller for longer throughout the day is an awesome win for you…and if it is going to help you stop eating high-calorie snacks late at night then that too will help you keep your calories down over time.
Added to everything else…
You will be increasing your Vegetable intake - and no bad can come from that can it?
Now onto Water…
Water is filling, and can very much reduce appetite, especially when consumed before you eat.
This study titled: “Association between water consumption and body weight outcomes: a systematic review”
It found:
“Of 4963 retrieved records, 11 original studies and 2 systematic reviews were included. In participants dieting for weight loss or maintenance, a randomized controlled trial, a nonrandomized controlled trial, and an observational longitudinal study showed that increased water consumption, in addition to a program for weight loss or maintenance, reduced body weight after 3-12 mo compared with such a program alone” [4]
Hunger and thirst are interlinked also. When I am working with a friend who I coach online, and their calorie consumption is where it needs to be, but they are still feeling hungry, I will point them towards their water bottle, and remind them of my Five Awesome Rules For Fat Loss Life or the blog post below.
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Back to water…
I will always ask them to aim for 3 liters a day.
And they react like this:
This is a lofty goal.
But I found that setting this goal higher, as it is a behaviour that can be very easily done, means that my clients would be more than likely to hit an amount appropriate for them and their goals.
Thus, lowering their hunger, and therefore their caloric intake.
So, if it’s late at night, and you know that going to the fridge for that snack is an option that isn’t going to make you feel your best, then you should probably think about reaching for the water bottle first.
Establish if you are hungry or thirsty.
And I reckon about 80% of the time, the water will do the trick.
If you have some water, wait 15mins, and still think you are hungry…then consider having some food….but my best advice in this situation would be:
4. Get More Sleep
The Blog Post I published before this one is all about “How Sleep Affects Your Weight”.
But in terms of more sleep leading to less late-night snacking, I think the point is rather obvious. If you are in bed asleep, you’re not in the kitchen eating food.
Then the benefit of being in bed earlier will help reduce your calorie intake the following day. Added to that, improved sleep, helps you regulate your emotional responses the next day, and if emotional eating is a reason for your late-night snacking then a great strategy against that will be getting those extra hours of zzzz’s.
For optimal sleep, you want to plan for about 8 hours of sleep a night. One thing that always perplexes me about the way you manage sleep is this:
You rely on your wake-up time being the marker of your total time sleep.
But your wake-up time is out of your control pretty much. You could be woken up early, which frequently happens, by some traffic, a bird, a child, needing a wee.
Suddenly you have had a bad night’s sleep because you went to bed at 11:00 pm hoping you would get your 7 hours in and suddenly woke up at 5 am.
Plan better.
If you went to bed at 10:00 pm suddenly 5 am isn’t such a bad wake-up time.
Sleep is the foundation that your appetite control is built on. This study found a correlation between lack of sleep in duration and increased Grehlin and lack of sleep in duration and decreased Leptin.
Grehlin is a hormone that is responsible for how hungry you get. Leptin is the hormone responsible for how full you feel.
So yeah. Poor sleep leads to these two hormones very much working against your ability to curb that late-night eating.
Other strategies to improve your sleep are:
Exercise Regularly
Sleep with your Circadian Rhythm
Listen to Sleep Stories (link to my YouTube Sleep Stories)
Listen to Sleep Meditations (link to my YouTube Sleep Meditations)
Stop Drinking Caffeine from 11:00 am
Reduce Alcohol Intake
And Brush Your Teeth…
This is anecdotal evidence, as is in there is ZERO Science to actually back this up, but brushing your teeth has been reported to stop people snacking.
And it makes sense right?
Have you ever had Orange Juice straight after you brushed your teeth?
The combination of tastes, the effort of going to all that trouble to have to brush your teeth again, or if there is some psychological thing about the act of brushing your teeth priming your mind for sleep as opposed to food…but…whatever works.
Maybe try it next time your legs are walking to the fridge and the brain is saying “NOOOOOOOO”. See if it helps.
5. Lower Your Stress, Anxiety and Boredom
I know that this is easier said than done. But if you can at least practice some behaviors that will help you lower these two things, then you are going to put yourself into a better position when it comes to these food cravings, especially late at night.
Of these 7 strategies, there are 2 that most people will ignore.
Get More Sleep and Lower Stress, Anxiety and Boredom (especially Stress and Boredom)
Personally, I believe them to be the most important two on the list, for the exact same reason - they are mostly overlooked.
We seem to be happy to live in the two states of being Stressed and being Bored quite a lot in this day and age. It's almost a Social Norm for us, to just accept that we will be stressed and that boredom is one of those things.
However, when you accept living this way, as opposed to learning to control it, you pay the consequences for it as well.
And the consequences of chronic stress, and Emotional Eating manifesting itself as Boredom Eating are indeed not fun things to be faced with.
So let me show you the link between these emotions and how that is impacting your Fitness Goals.
Does Stress Lead To Increased Food Intake?
This study [6] called “Stress and Eating Behaviours”
“Repeated bouts of minor daily stressors that keep the stress system in a chronically activated state may alter brain reward/motivation pathways involved in wanting and seeking hyper-palatable foods and induce metabolic changes that promote weight and body fat mass”
The part of this that I find correlates majorly to late-night eating is the term “hyper-palatable foods”. When you are stressed you aren’t eating apples and oranges. You’re eating Apple Pies and Terry’s Chocolate Orange.
Does Anxiety Lead To Increased Food Intake?
This study [7] from 2017 is called “Effects of anxiety on caloric intake and satiety-related brain activation in women and men”.
It took twenty-nine twin pairs (58 individuals) and asked them to fill out a questionnaire about their tendency to be anxious. Participants had to answer questions like:
“I worry too much over something that really doesn’t matter”
“I am content; I am a steady person”
and questions like:
“I am tense; I am worried” and “I feel calm; I feel secure”.
All items are rated on a 4-point scale (e.g., from “Almost Never” to “Almost Always”)
Participants were then given an all-you-can-eat buffet, as a thank you for filling out the questionnaire, and were not told their intake was being recorded.
And those that scored a higher rating of anxious feelings on the questionnaire also ate more food at the buffet (Fig A)
As you can see from the graphs. The Twin that scored higher on the Trait Anxiety Scale also ate more food at the Buffet, independent of BMI (Fig B)
The study concluded the following:
“In conclusion, the current findings suggest that anxiety promotes caloric consumption and consumption of high-fat foods in women. We also provide evidence that anxiety alters brain responses to satiety such that the normal reduction in activation by high-calorie food cues induced by a meal does not occur in highly anxious women, suggesting a disruption in neural circuitry that could promote overeating. Anxiety may be a risk factor for obesity, but we show this risk is likely limited to people with a genetic susceptibility to weight gain”
So this gets more complex than just…you’re anxious so you increase your calories.
It also means that if you are anxious, you might show signs of Leptin Resistance which therefore means you won’t know if you are full or not.
Does Boredom Lead To Increased Food Intake?
I think we all know this to be true colloquially.
However, this study from 2012 [8] by the University of Limerick, proves it to be true.
Researchers wanted to establish whether or not Boredom eating is a distinct construct away from other negative emotions by revising the Emotional Eating Scale.
Results found were: “On the open-ended items, participants more often reported eating in response to boredom than the other emotions”
They also stated: “boredom leads to unhealthy eating, as it helps to distract from the unpleasant boredom experience.”
Added to that, a study in 2016 by the University of Central Lancashire ran a couple of tests to measure this also.
The first test asked 52 people to fill out a questionnaire about their food preferences, then complete a task of copying the same group of letters over and over again. They then filled out the questionnaire again.
The second test was 45 participants and they got to watch either a funny video or a boring video. As they watched bowls of snacks were left out for the participants for them to eat ad libitum.
They found that:
“From the first study showed people were more likely to express a preference for unhealthy foods like crisps, sweets and fast food after completing the boring task.
The results from the second study showed that the participants who had watched the boring video ate significantly more unhealthy food.” [9]
How To Lower Stress, Anxiety, and Boredom
You will start to see a pattern emerging in all of these Strategies and the positive behaviors that will help you stop those late-night food cravings.
Some of these will help all three categories, some of them will only help one emotion, however, all of them will go some way to helping you stop those late-night cravings for food:
Exercise Regularly (again)
Improve Your Sleep (again) by not staying up late mindlessly watching tv and playing video games - get to bed earlier and turn off the electronics
Eat more nutritious food
Meditate
Reduce Caffeine intake
Journal Daily
Communicate your feelings
Manage your to-do list to avoid procrastination
Get focused on what you want from life
Pick Up A Hobby
Pick a few from the list, the ones that excite you the most and have the lowest barrier of entry for you, and see if that helps you with those late-night munchies.
6. Stop Restricting Food
I would say that food avoidance is one of the biggest reasons that people crave food.
Pink Elephant syndrome.
You know, if I’m telling you not think of that big, round, funny-looking Pink Elephant…
You’re going to think of it.
Put into the mix that we have a sensual relationship with food, and if I tell you not to eat something….you are going to crave it more and more.
And the cravings ALWAYS WIN.
Because they rear their head, at night, when you are stressed, anxious, and bored.
Are you starting to see a theme here?
This is also a key construct in why Diets Fail - because many Diets require you to give up foods you enjoy. But the cravings will always win because your willpower is finite - and then the feelings of guilt and failure set in, perpetuating the cycle that has led you to look for a solution in the first place.
This study [10] from 2005, is called “The Effect of Deprivation on Food Cravings” and for one week they took 103 Female Undergraduates and deprived them of Chocolate, Vanilla or not deprivation at all.
The result was:
“Chocolate-deprived restrained eaters consumed more chocolate food than did any other group. Restrained eaters experienced more food cravings than did unrestrained eaters and were more likely to eat the craved food”
But for me the most interesting conclusion was this:
“Moreover, restrained eaters deprived of chocolate spent the least time doing an anagram task before a "taste-rating task" in which they expected that chocolate foods might be available”
So if you are deprived, not only will you actually end up eating more, but you will also rush through life at times where you think the food that you are deprived from is on the other side of the task - and as we know from other studies when you are in a state of stress, you will indeed consume more food.
The final conclusion from this study was the following:
“Converging measures of craving indicate that deprivation causes craving and overeating, but primarily in restrained eaters.”
Which draws a direct correlation between deprivation - and overeating especially in those who are abstaining from certain foods.
Ergo, to conquer those cravings, give yourself permission to eat the foods you enjoy the most.
Remember, if it is within your Calorie Window it won’t halt your progress. Added to that…even if it is outside your Calorie Window, having it might still do less damage to your overall goals than not having it at all.
Remember…CRAVINGS ALWAYS WIN because WILLPOWER IS FINITE.
And by giving yourself permission to eat these foods you will eradicate many negative feelings you attach to “indulging”.
Bottom Line
These strategies are here to help you understand why you might be behaving in a certain way. All 6 might work a treat for you, you might only need one or two of them to find success.
As I have been writing this article, someone has reached out to me on Instagram discussing her past trauma and how that effects her eating, especially late at night. Emotional Eating is a whole other topic, and although some of what I have shared in this article might be helpful to you, if you are dealing with something a lot deeper then I urge you to get the proper help needed for that.
In our conversations, this person explained to me that as part of dealing with the trauma it leads her to eat foods that she is craving, foods that she also knows work against her fitness goals.
But in this instance, working on the trauma and resolving what happened is much more important. If eating choclate after a therpay session helps you cope with the therapy and is a part of the process of your healing, then you have to understand that is going to be better for your long term success as a person, as opposed to your short term success for your fitness goals.
To be hungry is normal.
To have cravings is normal.
To have an appetite is normal.
To have reduced willpower in the evenings is normal.
I don’t want you to have read this article and then thought that because you can’t seem to avoid late-night snacking, even when you implement some of the things in this article you are in some way “broken”.
We all need to stop trying to find ways of erasing our human self, in the pursuit of fitness.
You don’t need appetite suppressants, you don’t need bio hacks and you don’t need to just “have more willpower”.
You more than likely need to have more self-empathy and understanding for your own human condition.
And you probably need to:
Exercise some more to reduce your stress
Get to Bed earlier to help reduce your stress
Stop restricting yourself away from foods you love….to reduce your stress.
Your cravings come from too much stress and drained willpower at the end of the day.
Luckily, that’s far easier worked upon than trying to “fix” what isn’t broken in the first place.
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References:
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Yau, Y. H., & Potenza, M. N. (2013). Stress and eating behaviors. Minerva endocrinologica, 38(3), 255–267.
Mestre, Z. L., Melhorn, S. J., Askren, M. K., Tyagi, V., Gatenby, C., Young, L., Mehta, S., Webb, M. F., Grabowski, T. J., & Schur, E. A. (2016). Effects of Anxiety on Caloric Intake and Satiety-Related Brain Activation in Women and Men. Psychosomatic medicine, 78(4), 454–464. https://doi.org/10.1097/PSY.0000000000000299
Koball AM, Meers MR, Storfer-Isser A, Domoff SE, Musher-Eizenman DR. Eating when bored: revision of the emotional eating scale with a focus on boredom. Health Psychol. 2012 Jul;31(4):521-4. doi: 10.1037/a0025893. Epub 2011 Oct 17. PMID: 22004466.
British Psychological Society (BPS). "Bored people reach for the chips." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 27 April 2016. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/04/160427081756.htm>.