Managing Midnight Munchies

Food For Thought

Managing Midnight Munchies

by Leanne Ely, CNC

 

Midnight snacking is a habit that we all start probably in our early teens if not sooner. When you’re thirteen and you have a sleepover with a bunch of friends, the idea of having junk food at midnight or later seems really cool. Then high school comes around and midnight snacks become more than an occasional exception, they become a weekend ritual. Later, this late hour snack-fest is absolutely necessary to survive the all-night study extravaganzas of college. It seems with each phase of our lives we allow what we first considered a special privilege to turn into an abused custom.

Time for a change!

Eating late at night is not a habit you want. It messes with maintaining your healthy diet and even disrupts your regular eating habits. If you eat a large amount of food past 9 or even 8 o’clock, you may wake up feeling full and choose to skip breakfast. Once you skip one meal, the portions and timing for when you eat throughout the rest of the day are typically off-balance and you’ll probably find yourself wanting to snack late at night all over again.

How do you control that? Just keep your regular eating steady: don’t skip breakfast, have lunch before 2 in the afternoon, find a fiber-filled snack to hold you over until dinner (I love apples dipped in almond butter), and by the time you finished off your last meal, your stomach should be more than satisfied.

So there you have it. Don’t forget that you’re doing your body a great favor if you keep to a regularly timed diet. Keeping this in mind will chase off those midnight munchies for good!

Have you seen our Snack-A-Thon? Check it out: Part 1, Part 2.

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