How To Stop Overeating At Night: 15 Tips That Actually Work
How To Stop Overeating At Night: 15 Tips That Actually Work
If you are starting out overweight, I’m sure you have faced this issue at least once in your fitness journey.
The biggest mistake you can make while trying to correct this mistake is trying to ‘willpower and self-control” your way out.
We have a multi-billion dollar fitness industry trying to tell you that you aren’t working hard enough and that the reason you aren’t seeing results is that you lack the discipline your favorite influencers do.
This, in turn, lowers your self-esteem and makes you feel like you lack the control others supposedly have.
But diving deeper, you’ll notice that those of us who end up having uncontrolled eating sessions often do it as a stress response.
While these stressors can be different for different people, the very act of trying to diet itself is a stressor that often leads to overeating.
While caloric restriction is needed for fat loss, purely basing your diet on restriction will leave you disappointed, especially if you’re someone who’s been struggling to lose weight.
So what’s the fix?
15 Tips To Fix Overeating At Night That Actually Work
1. Don’t Solely Rely On Willpower
One of the main reason that leads to uncontrolled eating at night is having a diet based on deprivation.
If you set up your diet plan depriving yourself of foods that satisfy you, you will be primarily dependent on your willpower to stay on plan.
But guess what?
Your willpower is finite.
At some point, you will crack.
And when this happens, you end up eating foods you deprived yourself of the entire day.
Instead, if you base your diet on satisfaction, you can dramatically reduce the chances of uncontrolled eating at night.
This means that your diet should not only satisfy your macronutrient and micronutrient needs, but also your tastebuds.
2. Identify The Cause Of Overeating
You aren’t going to be able to fix the problem if you don’t know the cause.
In many cases, binge eating at night isn’t because of deprivation throughout the day.
Instead, it is because of factors like stress and boredom.
Now, I know that just identifying the cause is not going to solve your problem.
But once you identify the cause, you can be more aware of your choices.
This will help you “regain control” and help you make better dietary decisions.
3. Eat Regularly Throughout The Day
If you feel you are someone who genuinely feels hungry by night, eating regularly throughout the day can help you solve this problem.
Eating regularly can help you keep your blood sugar levels stable when compared to eating just 1 or 2 big meals in a day.
This will prevent you from feeling very tired and hungry at night.
If you have been skipping meals, it can be a good idea to add them back in and see how it goes from there.
4. Try Intermittent Fasting If It Fits Your Lifestyle
This literally contradicts the previous point.
And that is exactly why I put it here.
It is important to understand that even though a lot of people face the problem of binge eating at night, the cause isn’t necessarily the same (which makes point 2 so important).
If you feel you just end up eating more at night because your lifestyle demands you to do so, trying out something like intermittent fasting can help you allocate more calories to later in the evening.
This can be helpful for individuals who stay up late in particular.
Pushing your first meal 4-6 hours from the time you wake up is a good starting point.
Make sure you aren’t making the 7 Intermittent Fasting Mistakes Keeping You Fat if you plan on following an intermittent fasting strategy.
5. Pre-Plan Your Meals
If you don’t have a plan, you’ll find yourself making quick decisions when you’re hungry and this could result in eating more than you’d like at night.
Even if you follow a flexible dieting approach, it can be a good idea to plan your dinner at the start of the day so that you don’t end up clueless later at night.
If you feel that you end up skipping eating your planned meals at night because of the prep time, you can prep them earlier in the day.
This means that when it’s time to eat, your meal is already prepared and ready to go.
Compared to having to cook the food from scratch, you’ll find it a lot easier to adhere to your plan if the meal is prepared already.
6. Include Protein And Fiber At Every Meal
If you feel that the above strategies don’t work at keeping your satiated, you probably aren’t eating enough of the foods that will help you do so.
Even if you don’t face the problem of binge eating at night, you should still develop the habit of eating a serving of protein and fiber with every meal.
This can help you hit your protein target and provide you with food volume which will make dieting at lower calories feel a lot easier.
Fruits, vegetables and popcorn are some of the best high-volume high-fiber low-calorie foods that you can throw into your diet for their satiety benefits.
7. Have A Routine
While you will still lose fat irrespective of the meal timing, it is better to have a set routine in place.
It’s better to eat the same number of meals around the same time every day so you get accustomed to it.
Without a fixed routine, it can be hard to gauge if you’re actually hungry or not.
Having a sporadic meal routine based on a busy lifestyle can also result in skipping meals when hungry and eating when not.
Instead, having a set routine will help your body to get accustomed to what you’re eating and it will make the process feel a lot easier.
8. Don’t Keep Trigger Foods At Home
This is easier said than done, especially if you’re living with your family.
But whenever possible, it is better to keep trigger foods out of your house.
Do not confuse this for restricting those foods completely!
Think of it as damage control instead of eliminating the food altogether.
By doing this, you don’t place the stress of restriction on yourself, but at the same time, you don’t risk binge eating a large quantity of certain trigger foods at night.
For example, let’s say chocolate is your trigger food.
Instead of stocking candy bars at home, you’d be better off going to the store and buying one only when you really need one.
This can significantly reduce your chances of binge eating at night without making you feel overly restricted.
9. Reduce Stress
If you find yourself eating out of stress, put in place some simple de-stressing protocols that can help calm you down.
Incorporate relaxation techniques into your night routine and take some time off for yourself.
If you are facing very stressful situations where stress-eating is uncontrollable, try to replace trigger foods at home with low-calorie high-volume options.
This can help you reduce the damage and will allow you to get back on track sooner.
10. Keep Yourself Busy
It’s not uncommon to find people resorting to food when they have absolutely nothing to do.
The frequent trips to the kitchen always end up adding more calories to your planned diet and can turn your little snack into a binge eating session at night.
If you find yourself eating out of boredom, try to find something you enjoy doing and allocate time to it later in the evening.
Learning a new skill, practicing an instrument or reading a book are great ways to keep yourself busy and prevent uncontrolled eating at night.
11. Don’t Cut Calories Too Low
Looking at the big picture, an aggressive calorie deficit can lead to hunger at night if you front-load your calories.
This just means that if you have a big breakfast on an aggressive calorie deficit, you will have to balance it out with a smaller dinner.
This, in many cases, can build up stress because of the restriction and can lead to uncontrolled eating later in the night.
The solution here is simple.
Don’t diet very aggressively.
Funny enough, the people who are hell-bent on aggressive dieting are often the ones who never see results because they keep yo-yo-ing back and forth.
You would be better off dieting at a sustainable level of calories consistently instead of dieting aggressively for a few days and erasing the progress with infrequent binge eating sessions at night.
12. Keep A Food And Mood Journal
Journaling your food and hunger levels can be a great way to keep track of what does and does not keep you full and satisfied.
Collecting as little as a month’s worth of data can help you get a better picture of what foods help you adhere to your diet while feeling satisfied and which don’t.
Based on the information you collect, you can alter your diet plan in a way that it helps you lean down effortlessly.
While everyone who gets lean and maintains that condition year-round doesn’t necessary journal, almost each of that person knows what foods help them stay satisfied while dieting down.
Only you can find out what works best for you and a journal is a great way to save data to see trends.
13. Break Pre-Established Associations
Despite being towards the end of this article, this is a very common problem.
Most people associate food with things like watching YouTube or Netflix.
This can do more damage to your progress than you imagine, especially if you’re someone who has a lot of screen time later in the night and who likes to eat constantly while consuming content.
Your best bet going forward is to work on breaking these associations.
It may sound difficult at first, but all you have to do is take it one step at a time.
For example, if you’re someone who makes multiple trips to the kitchen while consuming content, your first step can be to simply cut those trips down to 1-2 times.
Then you can work on taking only one serving for the session.
Next, you can slowly make swaps to lower calorie options and then to zero-calorie drinks like green tea and water.
Keep in mind that this has to be a very gradual process.
Put too much restriction and you will feel the resistance.
While most would just tell you to “push through”, I have realized that this is what leads people down the path of binge eating and guilt trips.
Be reasonable and take small steps towards the goal.
Patience is the name of the game here and is crucial to help you get lean in the most sustainable way possible.
14. Don’t Wait For “Tomorrow”
At no point should you wait for “tomorrow” to start your diet.
It doesn’t matter if you have already binged on a 1000 extra calories.
Make the decision to start right away.
The problem is that people like classifying things as black and white.
Since we talk about our daily calorie intake when talking about fat loss, people end up thinking that a calorie deficit is an on-off switch.
In reality, you have multiple periods of fat loss and fat storage throughout the day.
Whether you count your calories or not, your calories will always count.
Instead of trying to wait for “tomorrow” to “fix” your diet, start right away.
Don’t use overeating as an excuse to keep eating more.
This only leads to guilt and a lower self-esteem over the long run.
Accept where you are and accept that getting where you want to be is going to take time.
Once you do that, it’s going to be much easier to take action right away.
15. Believe In Yourself
These might sound cheesy or motivational, but it really isn’t.
If you lack self-belief, you will always be stuck in the cycle of self-pity and self-loathing.
Don’t be the person who keeps saying that “I just don’t have the right genetics” and “I don’t have the time to bring change”.
These are the people who keep trying and failing over and over again.
Instead, believe that you have what it takes to change your body.
This also involves “trusting the process”.
These things are often thrown around in the fitness industry, but very few actually follow it.
Once you start believing in yourself and in the process, you’ll realize that you stop stressing about the small things.
You’ll stop finding the shortcuts and hacks to fix your problems.
Most importantly, you’ll finally feel like you have control and getting lean will be effortless.
Again, this isn’t something that happens overnight.
If you face this problem, your best bet is to patiently take small steps and focus on the long term goal.
What If I’m Still Hungry At Night And I Want To Eat?
If you went through the above mentioned tips and you still feel very hungry at night, the worst thing you can do is restrict yourself and “willpower” your way out of it.
Doing so will keep you in the cycle of binge eating every now and then.
The most common fix thrown out is to just swap your food choices.
Craving chocolate? Have some strawberries.
Um what?!
In my experience, I haven’t found this to work well.
In fact, I found this to build up even more stress that later led to even larger binges.
Instead, my fix is to mix the foods you crave with lesser calorie dense foods.
For example, if you want to have a candy like M&M’s, mix a handful of M&M’s with some oil-free popcorn to make a home-made trail mix.
At first, this seems illogical.
Why would you want to “waste” 100-200 calories on popcorn when all you want is some candy?
This is because mixing high volume foods like popcorn with your candy can fill you up faster.
Eating 5 handfuls of M&M’s is going to be a lot more calorie dense eating 5 handfuls of M&M’s+popcorn.
Another example of this could be cutting up some fruit along with a spread like Nutella.
At first, it seems illogical to ‘waste’ a few 100 calories on fruit if you’re just craving Nutella according to the ‘If It Fits Your Macros’ mindset.
But having these lower calorie higher volume foods can help you control how much you’re eating to a certain extent.
I’ve found this to work even better when dealing with or reintroducing trigger foods.
Sadly, it’s hard to convince people who don’t have the best “relationship with food” to purposefully consume slightly more calories to reduce the chance of triggering an uncontrolled eating session at night.
Give this a shot and see if it helps you reduce how frequently you encounter massive binge eating sessions at night.
Conclusion
This brings us to the end of the article.
I hope you found a fix that can help you stick to your plan and reduce the chances of overeating at night.
The key is to remember that this is a slow process and that patience will be your best friend.
The more you try to restrict yourself and the more you try to hurry, the higher your chances of falling off the wagon.
Instead, trying to build habits that let you sustainably achieve your physique goals will be more fruitful over the long run.
If you have any questions, feel free to drop them down below.
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