Nighttime Snacking: Habit, Hunger, or Something Else?

You eat well all day, but when the evening rolls around, it’s like a switch flips. Suddenly, you’re reaching for snacks—chips, chocolate, whatever’s nearby. You’re not even hungry, so why does this keep happening? And why is it so hard to stop?

Nighttime snacking isn’t just about food—it’s about habits running on autopilot. Over time, it can leave you feeling frustrated, sluggish, and stuck in a cycle that’s holding you back from your goals. But here’s the good news: this isn’t about willpower, and it’s not a moral failing.

In this episode, we’ll uncover what’s really driving those late-night cravings, how to interrupt the cycle, and simple, realistic strategies to shift your habits—so you can feel more in control and aligned with your goals.

References

Season 1 of the Premium Podcast: The Obesity Guide: Behind the Curtain

Learn more about The 30/30 Program

Audio Stamps

01:35 - Dr. Rentea helps us understand the difference between physical hunger and cravings, and how to decide if eating at night makes sense for you.

03:40 - Dr. Rentea explores habit eating—when nighttime snacking is more about routine than hunger—and how increasing awareness can help break the cycle.

06:40 - Change starts with commitment—Dr. Rentea emphasizes the importance of truly wanting to break the habit of nighttime eating before taking action.

07:48 - Nighttime eating often starts earlier in the day—we hear how under-eating and blood sugar swings can set the stage for cravings and urges later on.

10:17 - Consciously planning your nighttime snack and balancing it with protein and fiber helps stabilize blood sugar and reduce cravings.

13:36 - Use pattern interrupts to bring awareness to your eating habits and make more intentional choices.

15:54 - If you're not truly hungry, identify whether snacking is serving you or signaling something deeper.

Quotes

“This is not a moral failing. This is just a snack that you're having at night.”

“When we talk about emotional eating, it's eating for any reason other than physical hunger.”

“Everybody's life is going to look different, so I'm not saying to not eat at night. You need to look at, does it make sense for me?”

“The first step is always awareness. We have to become aware of what the problem is for us to be able to solve it.”

“You need to have consent from yourself. You need to be willing t

All of the information on this podcast is for general informational purposes only. Please talk to your physician and medical team about what is right for you. No medical advice is being on this podcast.

If you live in Indiana or Illinois and want to work with doctor Matthea Rentea, you can find out more on www.RenteaClinic.com

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Transcript

0:29

Welcome back to another episode of the podcast and I the only person that is shocked how fast this year is flying by I Feel like every single patient I talked to this about but in my clinic I in the beginning I see patients much more often, but once patients have been in my clinic a while I'm seeing them about once about every four weeks right once a month and so I'm always shocked because when I'm I usually at the end of their appointment we make the next one and I just sit there and I think Oh my gosh, you know, we're in March, we're booking into April. It's just life goes so quick. So all I have to say is we need to make sure to set a few goals daily, we need to say a little bit of, Hey, what do I want to do? Because time passes so quick that before you know it, it's the end of the year. You're doing your year end review. And if you didn't just keep making little steps, you kind of realize. Ah, it's not turning out so well. So what I'm really enjoying is that we're having more sunlight, it's not getting dark as quickly, and I just feel like there's hope again. I love when spring is potentially in the air. We're still in cold times here, but I am loving the thought of potentially coming up that maybe some outdoor walks. I really miss being able to do outdoor walks. So let's talk today more about nighttime eating or nighttime snacking or emotional eating at night. It's really all the same thing. So I want to give a few sort of definitions or how to know this is happening to you and a few things to go over that might help this area if it's a struggle area for you. So first things first, this is not a moral failing. This is just a snack that you're having at night. So let's just start here. This is something that you've done. It's not who you are. I need to start with, let's take the morality out of food. Some people are so distressed by this that I do great all day. This is what I hear. I do great all day and then at night I don't know why I'm not hungry. I'm just in front of the TV and I'm having a few chips or whatever's happening. Guess what? We can work on this. The first thing I want to bring up here is that when we talk about emotional eating, it's eating for any reason other than physical hunger. If you have had your dinner and a few hours later you are legitimately hungry, physical hunger, means that your stomach, like your body is giving, not just your stomach, but your body is giving you signals that you're hungry, not your mind that is wanting specific things. When you have an urge or a craving, it's, I want something very sweet, salty. It's a specific thing that might be in the pantry, but it's not any food, dry piece of chicken. Boiled egg, apple, cheese stick. That's not what you're talking about. It's something very specific. Usually that is what I describe more of a head hunger. It's your brain thinking up different things that it wants, but it's not your body telling you that you're hungry. So if your body is saying I'm hungry, go ahead and eat. That is not what I'm talking about here. So some people, They actually plan in some evening food. And I want to give you a prime example of this. Why we can't just say like, Nighttime stocking's bad. Okay, it's going to be different for everyone. If you're someone that routinely goes to bed at 1 or 2 in the morning, I think it's unreasonable potentially to think that you might eat a dinner with your family at 5 and that you're going to make it till 1 or 2 in the morning. I mean, maybe at 10 o'clock at night, maybe you have a little snack. That makes sense, potentially. Everybody's life is going to look different, so I'm not sitting here saying to not eat at night. You need to look at, does it make sense for me? But one thing I want you to check in with, is this what I'm going to call habit eating? Meaning I got used to it, I soothed myself with it. It's a little bit of an emotional eat in the sense that I'm not hungry at all, yet I'm eating. It's not solving at all a physical hunger, but I've just gotten used to it and there's many different reasons why this can be happening. That is what I'm talking about in this episode. So one thing I want to bring up is that The first step is always awareness. We have to become aware of what the problem is for us to be able to solve it. If you are looking at, Okay, I'm at a stall. I'm at a plateau. I've been maintaining for a long time. I want to keep going. Often times you want to take this inventory, right? We've talked about this a lot. Alright, what am I eating? When am I eating? What's the quality of the food I'm eating? Is a lot of it ultra processed or is it whole based? There's that conversation. The protein, the fiber, there's so many things you can think about. It's not just calorie count. Okay, so there's that. Then there's thinking about, what am I moving? Am I having some intentional movement in my life? Am I just routinely getting movement during the day? Or do I need to bring in more? Or is strength training happening? So much along that front. What's happening with my sleep? What's happening with my stress levels? We could go on and on. There are so many different areas to work on. But oftentimes when we think about nutrition, I always look at, is there what we're going to say the low hanging fruit, right? So is it that the meal, we're actually eating past enough, we could decrease the portion a little bit and we'd be just fine. We wouldn't even know anything happened. But another thing that sometimes is helpful to work on, it's something like this nighttime eating, because you're not hungry and I want to say you're, you're unconscious in front of the TV eating, meaning you don't even realize it's happening majority of the time, you're not, you're unaware actually of how much. I have to say that the time when I'm just truly unaware of what's happening, if a Netflix episode is playing on our iPad, and I'm having a few pretzels or Sour Patch Kids or a few Cheez Its from my kid's plate, whatever it might be. I don't even know it's happening. I mean, I can tell you that I had it, but I cannot tell you how many. I can't tell you what really happened because it's just it's not getting registered in any capacity. And the problem with this becomes is that a lot of this can negatively impact our health, we're like, why am I never moving forward? I'm doing all this work. When really it's we could eliminate this time when you're not even hungry, it doesn't mean anything to you. It's not really what we're going to say that when I say, is it worth it? It's not like I'm never saying that you can have a bread or pretzels or any of those kinds of things, but, we want it to be worth it. We want it to be part of a meal that matters, you know, things like that. And so when we're thinking about nighttime eating where you're not hungry, you just got used to eating stuff at night, but you really want to break the habit. That is when we want to then ask the question. So. I'm not hungry. It is negatively impacting my life. Then we want to ask the question, do I want to change this? Yes, you need to have consent from yourself. You need to be willing to want to work on this. Do not, in fact, we just, we, I'm laughing, because we talked about this this past round in the 30 30 group. If you were part of the January group, nod your head if you, if you remember this. This moment where we talked about, What we're planning and how we're doing stuff, we were coaching, and I, I'm just going to tell you a general comment here because I don't ever out what people say, but I was like, do not ever again put on the to do list what you're, like, planning with food or on the to do list what you're not going to do. So do not, well, every day I'm going to do a walk and it never happens. Do not ever again put that on the list until you are committed that I'm going to make it a three minute walk and gosh darn it, I'm going to do it. And so the reason I bring this up, do not say that you want to work on nighttime eating if you don't, if you're not really 10 out of 10 committed that you want to try some different strategies. You want to maybe hear a few things from this episode. Maybe you yourself get a one on one coach. You yourself talk to a friend for accountability. You, grab a book about emotional eating. There's a million things that you can do, but you have to be willing to want to try something else and to do it. Okay, so consent needs to be there. The reason I bring this up, get out of the habit of thinking that you spin in life and that you can't do it and you're defeated. Stop that. It's not helping you. Alright, you realize you're not hungry, you realize this is affecting you, you do want to work on it. Now, here's the important branch point, if you got this far. The important branch point now is, Are you actually eating consistently and getting enough during the day? So a lot of times the classic pattern that I see the people that are doing this at night or let's say that you're binging At night, it's because you waited really long in the day to eat. You're the classic person Usually this is the general example that I see the most you're not eating until You're like you're getting up early six seven o'clock in the morning, but you're not eating until One, two, three. You're just like, oh, I'm not hungry. But then you're having tons of food at night, or you're just like very out of control at night, or you can't tell why, it's just like the snacking monster comes out. And the reality is, your blood sugar was all over the place. You were not getting enough protein, you were not getting enough fiber, nothing was really supporting you. But then you're expecting somehow at night when you have entire restraint collapse, when you just can't handle making decisions anymore, you're just out of it, right? Like you're that toddler that's just blows a fuse at night. That's how we all are at night. That's exactly what happens. You're expecting them to make the most noble decisions about this really entrenched eating pattern. Not gonna happen. So the thing I want you to look at first is, I want you to look earlier in the day. Because remember, usually eating pattern challenges are a 24 hour problem. So I want you to look earlier in the day. And honestly, this is where I'll often work with patients on that we actually do a small breakfast, even if they're not hungry. And I'm normally a fan of really listening to, when am I hungry and when have I had enough? But sometimes our physiology is not supporting us anymore, and we don't have a fighting chance in breaking the patterns when we're not doing things differently. So we might see, okay, if you're not eating anything in the morning, maybe we bring something in. We might look at, can we do three solid meals? Can we bring more veggies into those meals? Can we bring more plant diversity? What can we do to support you more? Is the protein there? Is the fiber there? Is there good hydration throughout the day? What we're really looking at, I hope you listen to, I don't know if it was last week's or a few before, I'll have to see, cause I never really know where these episodes are going to go when they air. But the point is, we talked about rest. If you are just a dried raisin at the end of the day, you don't have a fighting chance at a lot of these things. So urges and cravings are going to go up, the snacking habits are going to be there. If this is a struggle, I really want you to look earlier in the day, am I getting the type of nutrition that I need? Is it balanced? Is there any work that I could do there? Is the hydration there? Am I de stressing in some capacity? I always say, a walk, deep breathing, uh, taking micro breaks at work, everybody's life is gonna look different, but that's what I really want you to look for. Okay, now once you make sure, yes, I am doing that, I'm managing my stress, I'm making sure to eat at regular intervals, I'm getting water and that's going to solve it for a lot of people. But if it keeps happening at night, which this is something I have to say, this is, this is one of my greatest challenges. Like I'll get complete resolution of it cause I give attention to it. I'm like, all right, this has come back. We, you know, we don't, we're not hungry. We don't need it. And I'll start to do some of the behavior things, right? Like, I, I mean, to me, the, during the day, those things are really locked away. But, for example, like, I'll stop bringing the snack into the bedroom, right? And a lot of the time, can I defend myself? That it's because my kid does a lot of eating at night just based on his eating pattern. And he will often have it. But I've had to learn, okay, but don't do it for me, right? I'm like, okay, don't bring this upstairs, don't do this, don't do that. Okay, got it. But, one of the things that I'll have to really Uh, get down to is what, do I want to plan a snack? Do I want to plan for something to be there or do I want to plan to let the feelings come up, not have the snack and handle it differently? So that's your next branch point. Once you've really made sure that the day is supporting you, then I want you to decide it's not a problem if you plan a snack. A lot of people do great with planning a snack. So plan that. Especially if you're newer to this work and you're really in this, like, binge restrict, binge restrict, where you eat all the things and then you don't, and you eat all the things and you don't, usually it's really helpful to just plan the things you're doing anyway. Because I want to tell you something, when something is a forbidden fruit, it is so much more appealing. If you're thinking, I shouldn't eat the pretzels, and then, You're putting all that shame on yourself and you're getting the pretzel bag out, you're probably downing them really quickly. You're not slowly enjoying it and being like, gosh, are these great and just taking multiple bites per pretzel. You're not doing that. You're shoving it down. When we plan something our brain is turned on, it's happening consciously instead of out of urge driven eating, which is very like fast and impulsive we think we're like getting one over on someone when really we're just hurting ourselves, when we plan it, we take it into the conscious land and then we can start to say, okay, can I balance this? So I'm a really big fan and patients don't like me for this. I'll say, listen, I don't actually care if you have ice cream at night, but I need you to get some protein and fiber first. Hands up. Who wants to do that? Who wants to have a. An ice cream, but first be getting protein and fiber. The thing that happens, and the reason we do it, again, go back to blood sugar episodes, but the reason that we do it, it's because we regulate your blood sugar more, and then it doesn't lead to days and days and days of more urges and cravings. But the, the thing that also happens is that it's not an impulse randomness anymore. Now you got to think through it. Okay, do I actually want to balance this? Is this worth it? And a lot of times people are like, how do I want to do it? I don't want to if I can't have the chocolate on its own when it's sort of this thing happening, if I have to actually balance it and think about it, then it's over. That urge has passed when you plan things, there's actually nothing wrong with that. You probably already are going to make 99 percent of the progress. That I want to suggest is probably the first step. And I wouldn't take the first step of entirely eliminating it, because sometimes it's too activating for people. I've taken away something that has too much meaning for you. And by the way, you're not even going to realize it. That's the problem, you think whatever. I can just eliminate this. But then you're you feel even more drawn to it. That's how you know that you're not ready to get rid of something. When I'm suggesting that we remove it and you have a really big response inside. Okay, now if you're not charged about it and you realize, you know what, I have worked on this in the past, or no, I actually, I'm not that committed to it, I just literally didn't even know what's happening, it's running on autopilot, that's when we have to break the habit, we have to break the pattern. And this requires a pattern interrupt. You have a million opportunities to make this happen, you gotta pick one. So you could, I'm gonna give the example with my own stacking, okay? So I can physically not bring it up to the bedroom. The other thing I can do is decide, for example, I will not eat in front of a TV or an iPad, and frankly, any device. That is something that I wish I was perfect about that, because I would have no trouble with food. So, you start to look at, what are these things happening? For example, in my clinic, we have a planner, and there are pages in there that are called, Write It Down and Move On. These are not shame based writing exercises. This is to figure out, where is this happening so that I can break this pattern. People will write out, okay, this is where it happened, and then they start to realize, oh my gosh, I'm always in front of the TV. It's when I worked a few extra hours. Oh, my kid was sick. You start to realize what the hot zones are, right? When this is going to show up for you. But you, you, you break the environment. You stop putting yourself in that. So another big example I want to give here with this is when my kid was younger, it was really hard to focus on my own food when my kid needed so much help with eating. What really needed to happen is I literally needed to take my food sometimes and go in the other room and eat so that I could focus on how the food was feeling in my body and when to stop. Okay, that is one thing that I want you to look at is where can I break this pattern? Is it physically sitting in a different place? The other way to break a pattern would be you could create an alarm that, for example, will, let's say you're always doing this at, Six, seven, eight at night. You make it for 530 and you say, you know, I'm just giving examples like 30 minutes before this would happen. You say, Hey, reminder, we're not snacking tonight because we're normally not hungry. And I just want to see what happens for a week if I don't do this. Another example could be that you put sticky notes on the actual snack and you just say, Hey, is it worth it? Are you actually hungry? You give yourself a moment, a pause and interrupt. That's the pattern interrupt that I'm talking about. And when you start to do this, you get out of it being part of your habit body, just the subconscious where things are happening and you're unaware. And you start to be able to bring it to that prefrontal cortex, that's that front part of your brain that's actually thinking about things and cares about your goals and cares about breaking this habit and cares about getting to another place. So this is some really powerful stuff. I know today I really took you all the way through the cascade that are you actually hungry? Okay, go eat. Okay, do you actually want to work on this? Yes, if you have consent, is it easier to just plan a snack? I really love Brooke Simonson that comes into my clinic once a month and does a group nutrition call. She taught, or I mean she talked about this before her kids, so maybe it's change, but she often says how she's such a fan of the small snacks. She loves, a little bit of popcorn with whatever else. In fact, she's such a champion of having good snack ideas, I think. And, a lot of our nutrition comes from her and she really shows good how to balance things, for example, like if you have a protein bar, can we put with it, an apple, maybe some nuts, how can we balance things out a little bit more, but the point being, there's nothing wrong with the snack if that works for you. For me, it's like a gateway because I'm not actually hungry. And frankly, there's nothing that, that, unless I Have the whole bag. I don't really want it. It's not really solving physical hunger. So for me, it's getting away from food being like a hobby So that's why for me it just entirely needs to be eliminated Usually when I'm doing great and if it's there it usually tells me I'm overworking or something else is not going good it's a red flag to me. Again, I hope you got some ideas, some strategies, and this is the kind of stuff, by the way, that we work through in the 30 30 program. So again, I'm not sure when this is airing if we already have started the April round, but this is the kind of stuff that you want to work through because it's going to keep showing up. So the problem with long term weight management is that the same things keep coming. They're not going anywhere. By the way, even if you're on a medication, I mean, amazing. But it doesn't mean that problems don't exist. I'm going to leave the episode here, again, if the April 30, 30 round hasn't happened yet, we're going to leave a link in the show notes. I hope that you have an amazing rest of the week. If this is something that's a challenge for you, see if you can implement one of the strategies we talked about. And if you have a friend that struggles with this, please share that episode with them. All right. I hope you have a great rest of the week.