Daily Nutrition Mistakes You’re Making That Lead to Evening Overeating

If you feel like you're doing great all day with food but losing control at night, you're not alone.

This is one of the most common nutrition struggles I see with clients who are trying to lose weight.

You start the day with good intentions…
Maybe skip breakfast, have a small lunch, and grab a quick snack in the afternoon.

Then dinner comes and suddenly you feel ravenous. Portions get bigger, cravings hit harder, and it becomes difficult to stop eating.

And by the end of the night you think:

"Why do I always lose control with food at night?"

The truth is, this isn't a willpower problem.

It's often a nutrition timing problem.

When you don't eat enough during the day, your body naturally tries to make up for the missed energy later which often leads to overeating at dinner or late-night snacking.

In this episode, I'm breaking down the common daily eating patterns that sabotage weight loss and how to fix them so you can feel more in control around food and stop the cycle of nighttime overeating.

You'll learn how balanced meals and strategic snacks can stabilize your energy, reduce cravings, and help your body feel satisfied throughout the day.

In This Episode, You'll Learn:

• The common nutrition mistakes that lead to overeating at night
• Why skipping meals can slow weight loss and increase cravings
• How undereating during the day triggers nighttime hunger
• What a healthy snack actually looks like (and why snacks can help with weight loss)
• How to structure your meals to prevent evening overeating
• The simple nutrition shift that helps you feel satisfied, energized, and in control around food

This episode is for you if you:

• Feel like you overeat at dinner even when you try to be "good" all day
• Struggle with late-night cravings or emotional eating
• Often skip breakfast or eat very small meals
• Want to lose weight without relying on willpower
• Feel constantly hungry by the evening

Weight loss and healthy eating aren't about eating as little as possible.

They're about eating enough of the right foods at the right times so your body feels supported, not deprived.

When you fuel your body properly during the day, you'll naturally feel less out of control around food at night.

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Listen to the recent episode on Nutrition for Weight Loss by clicking: HERE

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Check out Bavarian Meats and get your own Bavarian Meat Sticks to try! Visit: Bavarian Meats | High Protein Zero Sugar Meat Sticks & Snacks

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Want to work with Laura? Seismic Shift opens on March 23rd to the waitlist only. Add your name to the waitlist by clicking here: Seismic Shift Group Health Coaching

The waitlist will be open with special discounts and bonuses from March 23-25, 2026. 

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💌 Connect With Laura:

1. Website: Health Coach for Teachers & Busy, Working Women
2. Instagram: LAURA B. | Teacher turned Health Coach | Podcaster🎙️ (@laura.b.healthy) • Instagram photos and videos
3. TikTok: Laura B. | Health Coach (@laura.b.healthy) | TikTok

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of the Isn't She Powerful Podcast. Thanks so much for tuning in to yet another week. And if this isn't another episode for you, but it's your first episode, make sure that you go up and subscribe to the show wherever you are listening. That way you get notifications whenever a new episode goes live. If you are listening on the actual podcast app, whether that be Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or any others, then there are multiple episodes that get released every single week. And if you are not subscribed, you are likely to miss one. So make sure you subscribe to the show. In this episode, I want to talk to you a little bit about nutrition and weight loss. And I just recently released an entire episode about this topic. So if you haven't listened to that episode, I'm gonna link it down in the show notes so that you go back and you listen to that episode. Because I in that episode, I'm talking all about exactly the portion sizes you should be following for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And I make it super clear. It's a visual model, it's not counting anything, it's not tracking anything, it's just visually, does your plate look like this? So it's very simple, really easy to apply. And so if you haven't listened to that, I highly recommend that you go back and listen to that episode first. But in this episode, I want to talk a little bit about pitfalls that you may fall into whenever it comes to your nutrition. And I also want to talk a little bit about snacks. I recently got another piece of mail from you guys. And if you go down into the show notes, you can look at the piece that says send us a text. Again, that is for people listening on the podcast. If you're on YouTube, you can put a comment on any of the videos and I will read it. But if you are listening on a podcast app, then you can see where it says send us a text. And Linda sent in a text. She said, Thank you for this podcast. I found you at random and I need to lose 10 pounds. This podcast will be one that I'm listening to often. I am so excited to have you here with us, Linda. And in this episode, I want to dedicate it to you and your weight loss journey because I'm gonna be sharing with you some of the things that I want you to pay attention to and start to work on. Welcome to the Isn't You Powerful Podcast. I'm your host, Laura B, health coach, educator, and founder of the Be Healthy Lifestyle. I'm here to bring you all of the health education and motivation so that you can sign off each week feeling equipped and empowered to tackle all of your health goals. Come along with me as I teach you the basics of healthy living so that you can have everyone in your life saying, Isn't she powerful? So here's what I see most people start doing whenever they decide to lose weight. And I used to do this too. So you are not alone in what you're doing. This was the cycle that I lived in for a very long time. Years I lived in this cycle from in high school when I decided I needed to lose weight in order to fit in all the way through 2020, whenever I finally did start to actually see weight loss. These were the this was what I was doing. You wake up in the mornings and you're skipping breakfast. And you're skipping breakfast so that you can save those calories. Why would you eat calories at breakfast? So you're gonna save those calories. You might have some coffee, you might have some water, but you're definitely not eating any food. Then you get to lunch, it's been hours. By the time you get to lunch, you're starving. But again, you're saving your calories. So you eat a really small lunch, and then by the time the afternoon comes around, 3 p.m., now you're actually starving. So you end up eating anything you can find: candy bars, chips, the easy little snacks that you can get in the vending machine, or you have stuffed in your desk at work, the easy things you can stop by the gas station and grab. Those are the things that you are reaching for first because your body is yelling at you to eat those foods, and there's a reason why. And then after that, you've eaten all of those foods and you get to dinner that night, and you're like, well, I already ruined it. So you end up eating so much food, you end up overeating and stuffing yourself, and then you feel guilty and ashamed, and you promise yourself that tomorrow you're gonna do better, and tomorrow you're gonna be different, you're actually gonna stick to it tomorrow. That's the routine that I find so many people fall into. And like I said, I used to be in that routine. I want to talk to you a little bit about the problems that I see at each of those stages. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, and I know you've been hearing it since you were a child, and then at some point along the way, we were like, yeah, that's not true. It is actually so important that you are eating breakfast. Your body has been digesting food all night long while you've been sleeping. When you wake up in the morning, your body is completely empty of food, which means that it is one, very hungry, and two, your cortisol levels are also spiked up because you don't have a lot of energy coming from the food. So you've got to be getting your energy from the hormone cortisol. In order to help to bring those cortisol levels back down and to help you to where you don't end up starving by the end of the day and into the afternoon, you need to be eating breakfast. I talk in the previous episode that I mentioned before about what that breakfast should look like. You want to have protein and fiber at your breakfast. Protein is what's going to fill you up during the meal, and then fiber is what's going to keep you full in between the meal. I talk a lot about the nutrition and the science of all of this in my group coaching program, Seismic Shift. And then I also give you recipes that already have the proper amounts of protein and fiber already figured out for you so that you don't have to do all of that work. You just have to make it and eat it. You don't have to question it anymore. I'm opening up the doors to Seismic Shift to the wait list only on March 23rd. So if your name is not on the wait list, get it on the wait list because I promise that you do not want to miss this opportunity. The price is going down, and I'm so excited to be bringing you so much value at such an affordable price. But as I was saying, you need to be eating breakfast. You need to be eating a healthy, well-balanced breakfast every single morning. And then we get to lunch, and lunch is typically a meal that people want to eat a really tiny amount of food. But what we are ending up doing is we are having a very little amount of calorie during the day whenever we are most active. And then in the evenings, whenever we aren't as active, we're sitting around more, we're just hanging out around the house, we are eating the majority of our calories, which means that during that time when we could be using all of those calories to fuel our body, and our body would actually be using them in the moment so that they don't sit and turn to fat. Instead, we are eating really tiny amounts of food, and then whenever our bodies are sitting around and we're not using that energy immediately, the food ends up sitting in our body for longer. So we've got to transition that. Something well balanced, something that's going to actually give you enough food. You need to be eating larger portions of food during the day. Okay, let's talk about hanger for just a second because we have all been there. You're starving, you didn't plan ahead, and suddenly the drive-thru or whatever junk food you have nearby feels like the only option to solve your problem as quickly as you can. This situation right here is exactly why I always keep protein on hand. And lately my go-to has been Bavarian meats. And you've probably seen me talk about them on social media more than once by now because I really genuinely enjoy the taste of them. They make macro friendly meat sticks with zero sugar that actually taste good, which is rare. They're made with great ingredients, come in both original and hot and spicy flavors, and they are such an easy grab and go protein option. I personally like to get the little Lane Jaeger snack sticks in the 10 ounce bag, but they also have individually wrapped ones that are perfect to throw in your car or the purse or work bag or whatever for those I'm starving and need food right now moments. Having protein ready helps you to stay in control around food, to avoid the impulse choices and to still feel good about what you're eating, even on the busy days and unexpected moments. If you want simple, satisfying snacks to keep on hand, head over to bravarianmeats.com to grab yours. The link for them is down in the show notes. In the afternoons, I wanted to specifically talk about this period of time in the afternoons between like 2.30 and 4 30. That time around 3 p.m. whenever you are starting to find yourself getting really hungry. Number one thing, you will probably find that you get less hungry if you are eating more food during the day. But you probably still will get hungry in the afternoons because a good, healthy, well-balanced meal is going to keep you full for around four hours, which means from that time that you eat lunch to about 3 or 3:30, it's normal for you to start getting hungry. And instead of trying to avoid it, avoid it, avoid it, not eat anything, and then end up overeating on some kind of junk food, end up eating a bunch of sugar within a few minutes. Instead of doing that, my challenge to you is that you actually plan ahead for a snack that is going to support the goals that you have. What does that type of snack look like? The number one thing that I want to see in your snacks is protein. And I'm sure that with all of the rage about protein that you see online these days, that's no surprise to you. We want to have something in your snack that has some sort of protein because that is going to keep your blood sugar levels steady. And we want that to happen so that the cravings go away, your body is more optimized for the weight loss that you are trying to achieve, and you are overall going to feel better and have more energy so that you could maybe go on a walk after you get off of work today, or you could maybe play with your kids in the evening. So by keeping that blood sugar stable, you are optimizing your body for a lot of things going into the second half of the day. So protein should be on that plate. This could be Greek yogurt, it could be a meat stick of some kind, it could be a boiled egg, it could be so many different things. There are tons of options of what this could look like for you, but there needs to be some sort of protein in your afternoon snack. And then you want to pair that protein with something. The goal is that you don't just eat protein on its own. You don't want to eat any food group on its own. So if you're eating just chocolate, you're just eating carbs all on its own. If you're eating just a meat stick, you are just eating protein all on its own. And this is not ideal for your hormones. So we want to pair that protein that you are going to start having as a part of your snack with something else. Ideally, a carbohydrate. This could be a carbohydrate that has some color to it, like uh a vegetable or a fruit, or it could be a carbohydrate like some crackers, or it could be even something that has some sugar to it, so that you give your body that little sweet fix that it's asking for, but you also are giving it what it needs with the protein. So some of my favorite snacks, whenever I was going through my weight loss journey, I would take one of those pre-made cups of yogurt, like the little single-served cups of yogurt, and add in about two tablespoons of dark chocolate to them. Dark chocolate actually is relatively good for you. It has some polyphenols to it, it has some antioxidants to it. So it's a pretty good source of nutrition if you're choosing good quality chocolates, preferably dark chocolates. So I would add about two tablespoons of dark chocolate chips into my yogurt, and that would be my afternoon snack sometimes. Another one of my go-to's was those small bags of popcorn, like the small lesser evil bags of popcorn that are already created to be a single serving. And I wouldn't just have that on its own, because again, we want to pair things together. I would add in about two tablespoons of some sort of nut, whether that be a walnut or an almond. And then I would also add in two tablespoons of dark chocolate chips to that. Mix it up, and now I have something that's salty and sweet. It has protein and carbs and a chocolate. So my body is feeling really good and really satisfied while eating this and for hours afterwards. So that's what I want you to focus on when it comes to your snacks. I want you to focus on pairing two food groups together, protein and something else. And then when it comes to dinner, I'm not saying I want you to eat a tiny amount of food, but I am saying that this meal does not need to be your biggest meal of the day. That feels weird and it feels awkward. But what I would often do whenever I was in my weight loss journey and my husband still wanted to eat the foods that he was used to eating, I would take some of what I would have eaten at dinner and go on before I even put it on my plate for dinner. I would go in and put it aside in a in a to-go container, essentially, that I have at my house, one of the Pyrax dishes, put it aside, and then I would eat it in for lunch the next day. So I was still getting that food. I was just eating it a day later for lunch. This helped me from having to cook for lunch every single day, and it helped me control my portion sizes at dinner. And because I had eaten such well-balanced meals all day long, it wasn't like I felt deprived at dinner or felt hungry still. I felt content eating the amount of food that I was eating because I had been so proactive and eating enough calories during the day. If you are finding that you are starving in the evenings, once you get done with dinner, you still can't stop eating. You're eating everything you can find. You're picking at this and that and this and that, then that is a sign that you are undereating during the day. We need to work on that. It could also be a sign that your nervous system needs some regulation because that's often a sign that you have been stressed during the day. And if we are stressed, our body doesn't give us the same signals to let us know that we need to be eating because it's focused on something else. It's focused on what it considers to be a bigger problem. Whatever fire it is that you've not put out during the day, that stressful situation at work, at home, or whatever it may be, that's its primary concern. And then whenever you get home in the evenings, your body's like, oh, finally, peace and quiet. We can actually be calm. And now that you're calm, your body starts telling you, by the way, we need some food. It's like a siren going off in your head, letting you know that you need food to make up for what you didn't eat during the day. So, with all of this being said, the number one things that I want you to start focusing on are eating enough food during the day. I want to make sure that you are eating well-balanced meals during the day. And I want to make sure that you are eating snacks that are paired together, two things, rather than eating something on its own. Once again, if there is anything that you want me to make an entire episode about for the podcast, go on down into the show notes. Find the link at the very top of the show notes that says send us a text. Send me a text and let me know what it is you want me to talk about. If you're watching on YouTube, you can leave a comment on any of the videos. I will find it and I will make a video just for you. Down in the show notes, you will find the link to the previous episode that I did for portion sizes for weight loss. If you haven't listened to that episode, I recommend going back and listening to that episode. And in the show notes, you will also find the link for seismic shift, adding your name to the wait list. The doors open up to that program very, very soon. And I would love so much to have you there. Each week I will tell you exactly what to focus on. There's no second guessing, there's no questioning, there's no wondering if this is what I should be working on. Am I doing the right thing? Somebody who has the experience of working with themselves, with other people, and getting the certifications is telling you this is the process to follow. If you follow the process, you will get the results. And that is what you will get in this program. You're getting the week the daily goals that you are going to be focusing on. You will get the recipes that are already figured out for you. I know that these recipes have the amount of protein and fiber and fats and calories that you need to reach your goals. They're done for you. You just have to make them. You also get live calls with me and a group chat for you to be able to ask any questions in between our live calls, share your wins, share your frustrations, and everything in between. All of the information for that is down in the show notes. I cannot wait to get to serve you in that program. And with all of that being said, I will see you again in the next episode. Thank you so much. I can't wait to see you again next week. And always remember the more you know, the more you grow.