It’s 1 a.m. and you’re staring into the refrigerator while your stomach groans in hunger.
You knew you’d find yourself there after skipping dinner yet again.
Cursing yourself, you push aside that healthy bowl of fruit and reach for some leftover pasta instead.
It’s been a long week.
You deserve it, right?
We’ve all been there.
Tired, stressed, and hungry, reaching for anything in sight to calm our desperate bellies.
Here are a few more reasons to kick your late-night eating habits.
Needless to say, it’s not pretty.
This is especially true late at night when organs are moving at a slower rate, including during digestion.
“Proteins and fats can take much longer and illicit more energy to digest,” she says.
Well, not necessarily.
The bottom line: neither extreme (eating too little or too much) is going to be good.
Unhealthy choices often lead to more unhealthy choices
It happens.
“For sleep to occur the brain needs to make adequate melatonin and serotonin,” explains Mora.
It’s our body’s way of habitually trying to create chemical balance.
It’s not so much when you eat, but what you eat
We get it.
Sometimes we work late.
Some of us have school deadlines to meet.
We can’t always control it.
However, we can control the choices we make.
“Being ‘stomach hungry’ means you should probably feed a growling stomach.
This would be triggered by hunger and indicates you are low on energy,” explains Lewis.
Lewis suggests paying attention towhywe’re eating as carefully as we pay attention to what we’re eating.
“In general, mindful eating balances how you eat with what you eat,” she tells us.
“It’s really all about awareness, checking in, and being mindful of the choices we make.
Maintaining weight really is all about the small everyday choices.”
