Nightime hunger

Avoiding meals early in the day be you're afraid to "use up all your calories" is likely leading to your overeating at night. Needless hunger, excess food focus & added stress are not helpful for fat loss.

Many of my clients struggle with nighttime eating. Be it mindless snacking, emotional eating or even binge-like episodes. While these events are multifactorial, they are often instigated by a simple & avoidable mechanism: hunger. While we spend time as coaches agonizing over why people overeat at night the first question should be the lowest hanging fruit; “are you hungry?”

This is why I like clients to think of the acronym HALT- Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired. Is your behavior being driven by one of these? If so, can we interrupt it in some way? Of course, over the long term it’s important to work on long term behavioral adaptations to regulate our emotions but if the solution is simply eating a bit more for breakfast then let’s start there. Heavy on protein. Some fruit. Veg if you like that w/breakfast (I don’t).

Being afraid of food isn’t helping any of us. Dispelling that fear is step one. It can be a very scary step but can pay off exponentially.