Do you find yourself sneaking at night and
rummaging through the refrigerator and cabinets for snacks? Do you empty a
whole bag of chips while binge watching TV shows at night? Can’t seem to stop
snacking at night? Well, you are not alone. A large portion of our population
is habitual of night snacking and it eventually affects their health both
physically and mentally. Night snacking leads to obesity, high blood pressure,
insomnia, stress and the list goes on. It is necessary to curb this habit of
night snacking in order to lead a healthy lifestyle. Here are 5 key factors to
help you prevent night snacking.
1. Recognize the cause and triggers
Analyze yourself
and ponder upon the reasons why you are having an urge to snack at night. The
causes may be physiological or psychological. Physiological causes might be
mostly due to low blood sugar that causes you to eat untimely. Or is it due so
psychological reasons that are caused due to stress, anxiety, depression and
has built up a habit. People often use food as a measure to curb the emotional
baggage they are carrying like anger or sadness. This leads to night snacking
even when they are not hungry. Night snaking can be caused due to boredom,
stress, depression, eating disorders. It is also caused due to lack of sleep
where you consider your tiredness for hunger. When you snack at night, your
sleep gets disturbed which makes you feel tired throughout the next day and
then you binge eat because of that. This creates a loop which might lead into
developing an eating disorder and other health related issues such as insomnia,
anxiety etc. Hence, monitoring your behavioral patterns and identifying what
triggers you to eat at night will help you break the cycle of emotional eating.
2. Eat at regular intervals throughout the day
When you don’t have
the right amount of food and starve yourself throughout the day, you tend feel
ravenous hunger at night. This leads you to consume unwanted amount of food and
increases your calorie intake. To avoid this you need to eat a proportionate
and filling amount of food at regular intervals so that you are satisfied and
full by the end of the night. Look into it that you don’t eat too much right
before bed as it also disrupts your sleep which in turn has a negative impact
on your blood sugars. It reduces the satiety hormones and increases the hunger
hormones. Another thing that might help you is scheduling your meals. Eating
meals at scheduled time will make you habitual in a while and you will not be
starving yourself.
3. Hydrate and Increase Protein and Fiber intake.
Protein and Fiber
can help you feel full faster and for a longer period. Thus, Including protein
and fibrous foods will keep you satisfied and full which will prevent you from
snacking at night. This also helps in maintaining a healthy intestinal and
heart health. Include small amount of nuts and fruits, legumes, whole grains,
oats and foods like these. They taste good and feels good at the same time.
Along with this hydrate yourself well during the day. If you feel hungry or see
yourself reaching for snack, try drinking water and eating a fruit or some nuts
and dry fruits. This will help eliminate your mindless snacking.
4. Avoid buying junk food.
What are the foods
or snacks that you tend to reach at night? If your answer is junk food then you
should probably avoid purchasing them. It’s not like we stop after eating 3 or
4 chips rather we end up eating the whole bag. Detect your trigger foods and
completely avoid buying them .Well as they say “Out of sight is Out of mind”,
Isn’t it? Junk food is kind of self-explanatory. It is named junk food for a
reason. These foods have high amounts of sodium, MSG’s and other preservatives.
They are linked to a number of health problems as well.
5. Distraction is the key
You usually eat at
night out of boredom or out of habit. If you work on keeping yourself busy, you
might trick your mind to not think of food all the time. As they say ‘Empty
mind is a devils workshop ‘, this saying totally applies here. Distraction does
not mean binge watching shows or movies. Doing that makes you crave for more
junk food as Movies = Snacks is the equation followed. Instead, you need to
keep yourself busy doing household chores, do some artwork which is relaxing,
cultivate some good hobbies. Along with this you can start exercising your body
by taking brisk walks, meditating. This will help you relieve stress and keep
you mind busy. Keep your health in check and aspire to lead a healthy
lifestyle.
Despite all this, do you still crave
for a snack at night? Let’s be real and say it won’t be easy to mend this habit
in a jiffy. Hence, it is okay to snack once in a while. Instead of consuming
the junk food you can try to replace the unhealthy food with some nutritional
alternatives like Nuts, berries, boiled eggs, raagi or kale baked chips, fruit
bowls etc. You can have additional help from a dietician along with this. One
of the best dietitian in Pune Dt.Siddhi
Takalkar-Deshpande,a registered
dietitian and a renowned lifestyle consultant
in Pune, can assist you with your queries and problems. You can visit
‘Nutriworks’ for further assistance.
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