Late Night Snacking

It’s 9 pm and you’re curled up on the couch with Netflix queued, when the ice cream begins its siren song from the freezer. Sound familiar?

Our nighttime snacking habits can derail our health goals in a big way. So, how can we address these cravings to bring our health goals into reach?

When approaching this topic from a functional medicine perspective, we want to get curious about our night-time cravings and think about them more holistically. Are we truly hungry because we have not nourished ourselves during the day? Is stress triggering our night-time habits? What about meal timing, sugar intake during the day, or our sleep patterns?

True Hunger at Night

This might seem obvious, but a lack of nourishment during the day can cause us to want to eat more at night, and our choices are not usually the healthiest in the evening.

When I ask women what they typically eat in a day, I commonly hear some version of, “I don’t eat breakfast; I’m just not hungry in the morning.” They often face relentless nighttime cravings because they’ve restricted their food intake during the day, causing their body to send strong hunger signals later.

If you’re struggling with cravings and hunger at night, skipping breakfast may not be helping you meet your goals. Since our bodies’ circadian rhythms prime us to efficiently use food as fuel while it’s daylight out, skipping out on breakfast can backfire.

Intermittent fasting (IF) can be very helpful for some people, but is not as simple as skipping breakfast. IF is narrowing our eating window, NOT depriving our bodies of needed calories and nutrients.

We know that front-loading calories earlier in the day is better for weight loss and satiety. So, a more effective way to implement intermittent fasting might be to move to an earlier 8-10 hour eating window, for example 9 or 10 AM to 5 or 6 PM. This still gives your body 15-16 hours of fasting while honoring your circadian rhythm and eating when your body is primed to properly use the fuel.

So if you’ve been skipping breakfast and are struggling to curtail night-time eating, it may be helpful to consider your nourishment during the day. Are you eating enough during daylight hours?

Biological & Emotional Drivers

How Fatigue, Stress, and Emotions Trigger Late-Night Snacking

While night-time snacking is sometimes simply a matter of hunger, it is often driven by biological and emotional factors that arise at the end of a long day. Many people feel the strongest cravings at night due to a mix of mental and physical fatigue, high stress, blood sugar imbalances, and emotional patterns that trigger the urge to eat.

Fatigue & Emotional Eating

When we’re tired, our body naturally craves quick energy to stay alert. This fatigue-driven need for a boost can lead to late-night snacking, often on sugary or processed foods, as our brain recognizes these as fast sources of fuel. Self-control is also often depleted after a busy day, making us more likely to indulge in cravings.

Stress & Cortisol’s Role in Cravings

Stress is another significant driver. Elevated cortisol levels, the body’s primary stress hormone, can increase our appetite, especially for comfort foods like sweets, salty snacks, and refined carbohydrates. Our body associates these foods with quick satisfaction, but eating them late at night can disturb digestion, blood sugar balance, sleep quality, and hormonal regulation, setting up a cycle that’s hard to break.

Emotional Triggers?

For many, evening and nighttime are quieter parts of the day, providing time to unwind and reflect. This stillness can bring up emotions set aside during a busy day. Eating can sometimes become a way to soothe loneliness, sadness, boredom, or unresolved feelings. This is known as emotional eating, and it can quickly become a habit if not addressed.

A Practical Tool: Keeping a Snacking Journal

One helpful way to tackle emotional and stress-driven snacking is by keeping a “Feelings Journal.” Here’s how it works:

Take a Pause: Before you reach for a late-night snack, pause and take a few deep breaths. Ask yourself if you’re truly hungry, or if this craving might be a response to fatigue, stress, or an emotional need.

Use the Salmon & Broccoli Test: If you had a plate of salmon and broccoli (substitute your preferred healthy, satisfying, but not comfort food here) would you want to eat it? If so, perhaps you are actually hungry. If a nutritious meal wouldn’t satisfy you right now, physical hunger may not be driving you to that snack.

Use a Feelings Wheel: Many people find it difficult to identify exactly how they feel in the moment. A feelings wheel—a tool that categorizes emotions—can be a great visual guide. Use it to pinpoint whether you’re feeling something specific, like anxiety, loneliness, overwhelm, or simply fatigue.

Write It Down: In your journal, jot down how you feel in that moment. For example, “I feel restless because I have unfinished work,” or “I feel lonely with no one else awake.” Taking a moment to acknowledge your feelings can reduce the urge to eat as a distraction.

Reflect and Reframe: Once you’ve identified the feeling, consider if there’s a way to address it without food. If you’re feeling anxious, for instance, a few minutes of deep breathing or a short meditation might be more satisfying than a snack. If you’re tired, it might be time to wind down for bed rather than eat to stay awake.

By journaling your emotions before snacking, you’re exploring your true needs to find healthier ways to meet them. Over time, this practice can help you gain awareness and control over emotional and stress-driven eating patterns.

Stress Eating is Real

If you notice that you’re eating to calm yourself down, you’re not alone. Eating activates your vagus nerve, your primary nerve in the “rest and digest” (parasympathetic) nervous system.
No wonder we want to eat when we feel emotionally overwhelmed. Our bodies activate a calm state when we swallow and digest food and when our stomachs are stretched.

Eating as a Tool to Manage Stress

Our bodies seek ways to bring balance to our nervous system. It makes sense that we would gravitate to the tried and true tool so accessible to all of us in our food-centric society.

It’s not just you and it’s not in your head; eating does reduce stress in the short-term. And it also may be derailing your long-term health.

Healthier Stress-Management Tools

Eating for a mood lift may be hindering your other health goals like improved sleep, weight loss, blood sugar balance, healing, hormone balance, or increased energy. Practicing alternative tools can provide that same “state-shift” without the drawbacks of emotional eating.

Non-Food Ways to Activate Your “Rest and Digest” Nervous System:

Three minutes of slow breathing: Deep, diaphragmatic breathing (for example, 4 seconds in, 6 seconds out) can stimulate the vagus nerve and calm the nervous system.

Get into nature: Stepping outside, even for just a few minutes to look at grass or trees – or even the stars – can bring on a calming physical response.

Try journaling: Journaling can help whether you notice that you are ruminating on a specific person or topic, or if you’re just not sure what the anxious feelings are about.

Meditate or do a body scan exercise: This 10-minute yoga nidra body scan exercise is a guided practice in shifting your nervous system into a calmer state.

Reading anyone? Yes, reading a book (as long as the content is not upsetting) can be a very effective way to calm the nervous system.

Try some new tech: If you enjoy seeing the data, there are many interesting new wearables and gadgets to help you calm your nervous system.
 

 
Any or all of these, when practiced regularly, are “exercises” for your nervous system. As you practice downshifting from the sympathetic to the parasympathetic state, your body learns to do this more easily.

These stress management tools are definitely more hormone and blood-sugar-friendly than diving into a bag of chips.

Blood Sugar Imbalance

How Roller-Coaster Blood Sugar Leads to Evening Cravings

When blood sugar levels resemble more of a roller-coaster instead of a gentle wave throughout the day, we’re likely to experience intense cravings, especially in the evening. These swings can create a cycle of highs and lows that leave us feeling drained and hungry, setting the stage for night-time snacking.

So, why are evening cravings so intense? The body’s hormonal rhythms play a role. When blood sugar is low, our bodies release cortisol, a stress hormone that can drive hunger, making cravings even stronger at night. At the end of the day, fatigue also plays a role as the body seeks some “quick energy” from processed carbs and sugars.

To keep your blood sugar stable throughout the day, it’s important to optimize our sleep, eat real, whole foods, and minimize added sugars. I often coach my clients to never eat “naked carbs”, but instead to pair their healthy carbs with some protein, fat, and fiber. So, for example, if you’re going to eat a piece of fruit for a snack, also have a handful of nuts along with it. If you really want a sweet treat, be sure to eat it after a balanced meal.

Did you know that you are less insulin-sensitive in the evening?

This means our bodies don’t process carbohydrates as efficiently, which can lead to more pronounced blood sugar swings and, ultimately, more intense cravings. The same meal can have a dramatically different effect if eaten at 8 PM vs. 8 AM. I’ve seen this with clients who wear a continuous glucose monitor and I’ve seen it in my own data as well.

The research in this study on nighttime eating shows that meal composition matters! The results are not surprising. Eating a meal at 8 PM had a significantly greater impact on blood sugar levels, causing a glucose spike. However, a higher protein, lower carbohydrate meal reduced that spike by 71.4%!

The bottom line is this: Aim to finish eating by 7 or 8 PM if you can. If you have to eat later in the evening, prioritizing protein and skipping carbohydrates can reduce a blood-sugar spike and help buffer you from the impact on sleep, higher fat storage due to the insulin response, and the other downstream health effects.

Breaking the Cycle of Late-Night Eating

Night-time snacking can disrupt sleep, hormones, blood sugar balance, and weight-loss goals. Often driven by fatigue, stress, and emotional triggers, cravings arise from biological and emotional factors, like cortisol spikes from stress or the brain’s search for quick energy.

Breaking the cycle involves mindful strategies, such as journaling to uncover emotional triggers, practicing calming techniques like deep breathing, and balancing blood sugar with nutrient-rich meals. Simple shifts, like finishing meals earlier and choosing protein over carbs at night, can help curb cravings while supporting better sleep and hormonal balance.

Could you use some help with this? This is a great topic to discuss with your health coach!