How to stop overeating at night?
How often do you find yourself reaching for your favourite comfort food at the end of the day? and saying “I will just have one or two cookies” but it ends up being a packet...
Do you feel like this overeating is consuming you most nights? Are you feeling at a loss of how to overcome it? The distraction technique everyone suggests just does not cut it?
I have good news! ...
This article is just for you and will dive into some of the main causes of overeating and HOW to combat them. When you finish reading this you will know how to stop overeating at night.
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In “3 steps to overcoming restrictive dieting and emotional eating” you will learn the 3 most important steps in healing your relationship with food.
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How To Stop Overeating at Night: The 3 Main Causes and How to Combat Them
The reason behind overeating at night is often a mixture of things and it is important that we address these causes in order to stop overeating.
1) How to stop overeating at night: Cause – Using food to avoid our feelings
Instead of allowing our emotions to be present or working through them we are pushing them away/ numbing them so that we can avoid feelings of discomfort.
Often overeating at night can stem from wanting to ‘escape’ feelings of stress, or to ‘relax’ after a long day. While this numbing of feelings/ distraction will work in the moment, as you probably know, the feelings come back once you are finished eating.
By overeating in these situations, we are allowing ourselves to avoid certain feelings which probably need to be addressed: whether that involves just allowing the feelings to be there or finding the cause of them and working through this.
Another point to note, is that this avoidance of emotions has likely developed into a habit: so has turned into a natural reaction to stressful/ uncomfortable situations. Therefore, you need to be able to break this reactive habit.
How to Combat:
To stop using food as a way of avoiding our feelings, we need to understand and become aware of the dependence we have on the overeating for our emotional needs. This awareness gives us the opportunity to create changes. From here we can decide to stop avoiding feelings and start breaking these reactive habits. I have written a blog post on how to stop feelings of stress/ overwhelm turn into emotional eating here that is very helpful in doing this: click here to read it.
1) How to stop overeating at night – Cause: Not eating enough throughout the day or not eating enough nutrient dense foods
We may simply not be eating enough throughout the day which creates a physiological need for more energy or nutrients: hence that sudden desire to eat a tonne of cookies or lollies. Your body could simply be looking for an easy energy source to make up for what it did not get throughout the day.
How to Combat:
Add more nutrition to your day, in particular, in the form of wholefoods. Plus, make sure you are not restricting foods especially when you are hungry. Check out my post here on including more healthy foods without feeling like you are on a diet. It is important to remember that the aim is to ensure you are taking care of yourself: this includes nourishing your body not restricting it.
3) How to stop overeating at night – Cause: You feel deprived or restricted
While this point is like number 2, it is more about what you are telling yourself you can/ cannot have. This is a really important point to consider, particularly if you come from a past of dieting. If you are restricting wholefoods, especially carbohydrate rich wholefoods (which is common among fad diets) then this point is important to check.
Additionally, even just telling yourself you won’t eat a certain food (eg. Cookies, chips etc) will create an unhealthy dynamic with this food. This is because by telling yourself you cannot have a certain food you create a psychological dynamic where you crave/ want the food more.
Furthermore, when you do eat this food you end up having negative thoughts about yourself because you are eating this "off - limits" food. These negative thoughts feed back into your restrictive thinking towards this food as you try and compensate for the overeating. This just continues the habit of overeating at night followed by restriction of these foods and then overeating again.
How to Combat:
Stop telling yourself you cannot have certain foods. Catch yourself when you are saying you are not allowed something.
Focus on nourishment over weight loss, if you have not already read the linked article, read it here to understand the importance of this mindset shift.
In Closing:
In this post I showed you how to stop overeating at night by going through the 3 main causes and how you can start working through them.
If you work through these causes, you will be able to stop overeating at night.
Remember to claim your free guide “3 steps to overcoming restrictive dieting and emotional eating” to get you started on your healing journey.
Click here to download it:
Resources You Might Find Helpful
Blog post: How to stop letting feelings of stress/ overwhelm turn into emotional eating in 5 steps:
https://makaylacarpenter.com/stress-overwhelm-turn-into-emotional-eating/
Blog post: 3 steps to include more healthy foods without feeling like you are on a diet:
https://makaylacarpenter.com/include-more-healthy-foods-without-feeling-like-you-are-on-a-diet/
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