Any dietitian will probably tell you that the No. 1 problem his or her patients encounter when trying to lose weight (or keep lost weight off) is the tendency to graze uncontrollably on snacks and treats after dinner. Our patients typically chalk this up to a personal failing; a lack of willpower. But that’s not always the case. And even if impulse control or emotional eating is the culprit, there are still tricks you can employ to conquer late-night eating. Here are three:
1. Eat a big(ger) breakfast.
Believe it or not, most of my patients’ problems with night eating actually originate hours and hours earlier: at breakfast time. When you’re trying to lose weight, you often start off the day trying to “be good,” which many people interpret to mean consuming as low-calorie and low-carb of a breakfast they can get away with. These skimpy 100- to 200-calorie breakfasts often leave you starving come lunchtime, at which point you may double-down on another “good” choice: the ubiquitous salad topped with grilled chicken.
[See: 7 Diet Mistakes Sabotaging Your Weight Loss.]
By the time dinner rolls around, these seemingly good choices start to backfire. Your body has just about had it with being underfed: After having fasted overnight and only being fed a few hundred meager calories for the entirety of your workday, it will make its nutritional needs known in the form of strong cravings that persist long after your (large) dinner has been eaten. You may recognize this as the sensation of just “needing something sweet,” even though your belly is still physically full with the dinner meal. It’s the force that pulls you back into the kitchen two, three or even four times before bed for that bowl of cereal, that spoonful of peanut butter, that handful of chips and that swig of juice. And then wracked with guilt, you start the vicious cycle all over again the next morning, vowing to be “good” so as to make up for last night’s raw cookie dough bonanza.
If this pattern sounds familiar, the solution is simple: Eat a little more during the day. It starts with a good, filling breakfast — I suggest one that’s at least 300 calories and includes foods that are a good source of satiating fiber, healthy fats, protein or all three. Chase this with a balanced, satisfying lunch that includes an ample portion of veggies, a small portion of high-fiber carbs (I’m partial to beans, lentils or quinoa) and a protein of your choice. After a few days of doing this, those nighttime munchies should be diminished into a shadow of their former selves.
[See: High-Protein Breakfast Ideas.]
2. Break the routine with a minty mouth.
In some cases, after-dinner grazing has become so routine that the habit has nothing to do with physiological, hunger-related cues. Your brain is on autopilot, directing you to check the fridge at each commercial break without even thinking. Some of my patients who have struggled with this scenario found success by “mintifying” their mouths at the witching hour as a psychological cue that their eating day was officially over. Some have chewed minty, sugarless gum (you can’t eat when there’s already something in your mouth!), while others have pulled out the big guns: brushing their teeth and nuking their taste buds with a rinse of Listerine. (I challenge you to crave anything sweet when your mouth is positively antiseptic.) In both versions of this tactic, the minty mouth interrupts the automatic impulse to snack with a conflicting message: Your mouth is closed for eating business.
[See: How to Break 7 Unhealthy Habits.]
3. Do damage control with very low-calorie snacks.
Sometimes when you stay up (too) late at night, you’ll genuinely become hungry again after dinner. If you don’t get something in your belly, you won’t be able to fall asleep. But snacking at midnight is far from ideal from a weight-management perspective. What’s a night owl to do? In these cases, I advise my patients to keep very low-calorie options in the house: roasted seaweed sheets, pickles, miso soup packets, unsweetened almond milk, egg whites, Crio Bru brewed cocoa drink or a 15- to 40-calorie ice pop. With these foods, you can fill your stomach with just enough of something to help you fall asleep without racking up more than a 50-calorie tab.
Editor’s note: The author has no material affiliations with any of the companies whose products were mentioned in this article.
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3 Tried-and-True Strategies to Stop Eating After Dinner originally appeared on usnews.com
