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How to stop binge eating at night explained by a registered dietitian

Nothing ever felt more defeating to me than when I would eat so good throughout the day only to mess it up with uncontrolled nighttime eating. 

It’s been years since I’ve experienced that, but I still remember how it felt in those moments when I was still always on a diet and had a terrible relationship with food. 

So in this post, I’ll go over experiences and research around binge eating at night and tips to help. 

But first I want to share a resource. This post will cover tips and basic information for general overeating and emotional eating, if you’re experiencing symptoms of an eating disorder such as anorexia, bulimia, or binge eating disorder visit the National Eating Disorders Association help page for resources.  

Why you’re binge eating at night

The weight loss industry is massive and it does better the more people who believe they need to lose weight. According to a 2018 report from the Centers for Disease Control, 49.1% of adults attempted to lose weight in 2013-2016. 

But even though many people try to lose weight, it’s common for the diets to fail. A study stated that less than 20% of people who attempt weight loss successfully achieve and maintain the loss for 12 months. And so often the blame for why the diet didn’t work is placed on the individual. But if more than 80% of people who attempt a treatment fail, is the problem the individual for the methods?

Dieting and intentional weight loss often teaches an unhealthy and distrusting relationship with food. It teaches you that you need willpower and self-control to manage eating behaviors.

Back when I was always trying to eat healthy, I tried this method. I thought all I needed was a strong why and I’d be able to finally commit to making those lifestyle changes. I would spend all day at work checking my food tracking app to make sure I was on target with what I could eat. It felt like all my energy went to planning my daily food. Then at the end of the day I would be so exhausted from all the mental calculations and using willpower to resist the foods I couldn’t have, that I didn’t have the energy left to maintain my self control. 

But all I ended up with was distrusting myself with food and decreased belief in my ability to stick to my plans. And I’ve seen this same experience over and over again in the people I’ve worked with for intuitive eating coaching – a lack of self trust and a strong belief they’ll lose control and overeat. 

I’m sure you’ve heard that saying whether you think you can or think you can’t – you’re right. Well when you don’t trust yourself not to overeat around food, you’ll end up being right and overeating. Which is why you’re relationship with food and beliefs about yourself around food is often the biggest reason you’re overeating at night. 

Other reasons could be:

  • Not eating enough throughout the day so overly hungry at night
  • Have a habit of overeating at night creating the nightly impulse to eat
  • Emotional or comfort eating

How to stop nighttime binge eating

Before you can stop binge eating at night, it helps to understand why you’re eating. So go over those reasons above and see if any of them resonate with you or if it’s something else. 

To stop overeating, you don’t just need strategies because those strategies will fail without truly understanding why it’s happening. Those strategies are just band-aids solutions that don’t actually treat the root of the problem. 

Once you know why you’re overeating at night, you’ll know what needs to be addressed to solve the habit for good. That way you can avoid the uncomfortably overfull feeling. 

Tips to stop night time binge eating:

Ensure you’re meeting your body’s needs during the day 

If you’re not getting enough to eat throughout the day your body will naturally be hungrier at the end of the day. So the first place to start is making sure you’re eating enough and a variety of foods throughout the day.

Expand your emotional wellness toolkit

If your physical hunger is met and you’re eating more than you’d like to eat at night, then expanding your emotional wellness toolkit will help. And again it starts with figuring out why it’s happening and it could be different reasons each night. Emotional eating could happen because you’re tired, stressed, unfulfilled at work, bored, lonely, or any emotion. 

Let me share one of my own examples with you. When I first started intuitive eating, one of the reasons I was overeating was fatigue because when I felt tired I would crave sugary foods. Once I realized I was just eating because I was tired I paid attention to my body after I ate. 

Back when I would diet I would have just resisted and tried not to eat. This time I gave myself permission to eat and noticed after eating I did have some satisfaction from eating but after still felt tired and physically uncomfortable. 

I stopped viewing emotional eating as bad and instead viewed it as one of the tools in my emotional wellness toolkit. But in this case, I decided it wasn’t effective. I just ended up more uncomfortable after eating because it couldn’t fix my tiredness. Over time, I learned to be ok with feeling tired and experiencing that feeling and stopped feeling the need to try to fix it with food. 

There were a few more steps involved in that transformation, but it’s just one example of how once you understand why you’re overeating you can decide if it’s actually working for you. 

Other tools I used to stop night time overeating include:

  • Journal prompts
  • Mindfulness meditation eating practice
  • Body scan meditations
  • Changing beliefs around food and eating
  • Practicing how I wanted my relationship with food to be

That’s not an exhaustive list of resources and tools to stop nighttime binge eating. But it’s a great place to start to heal your relationship with food and trust yourself around food again.

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