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Standing in the Kitchen at 9pm Again?

ByNicole Doria

How to manage cravings, understand your appetite, and still enjoy snacks while losing weight.

Late-night cravings have been getting the best of you lately?

I know how defeating it feels to have a great day of tracking and staying accountable… only to find yourself standing in the kitchen at 9pm wanting everything in sight.

Been there!

But overtime, I have come to understand myself a little bit better… if I have a craving for something, I need to figure out how to quench that exact craving most efficiently

…because what I resist, will persist.

….and I might be able to make it through most of the day, resisting whatever it is as much as humanly possible, but when I get to night time… depending on the day, I may not have it in me to resist anymore.

It might be that moment that I need to get something that will crunch the craving without causing me to just grab for a bunch of things to try to see if it will do the trick.

I definitely feel that we need to get something out of the way before I dive into how I go about figuring this completely for myself…

What or when I crave something… it’s not the same as having hunger.

Appetite vs. Hunger… They Are Not the Same Thing

Hunger is your body biologically signaling it needs food.

Appetite is a desire that can be triggered by things that have nothing to do with physical hunger at all.

  • Stress or boredom
  • Loneliness or emotion
  • Blood sugar dips
  • Hormones
  • Lack of sleep
  • Smells, social settings, or just seeing food on TV

Most of those cues are completely outside of your control. So before you do anything else… the first step is deciding whether you actually want to eat.

Create a Pause

This is where you get to put yourself back in the driver’s seat.

A pause gives you back the space between the cue and the action. It is the moment where you get to decide instead of just react.

Here is how it flows without the pause:

Cue → Thought → Feeling → Action → Result

Here is how it flows when you create one:

Cue → Thought → Feeling → Pause → Action → Result

That one step changes what comes after it. You get to think something different. Feel something different. Act differently. And get a result you actually wanted.

I know… slowing down is not always the easiest thing to do. We move fast. We are busy. We make choices on the fly constantly. But slowing down in just about every area of life tends to lead to choices that actually align with what we really want… instead of what feels automatic in that moment.

If you can make the pause happen… if you can challenge the feeling and the need you have… You’ve done it. You’ve created space. Now the answer might still be the snack. But it might not.

and you’ve given yourself a chance to go ahead and think something else so you can act in a different way.

But please when you practice this… still give yourself permission to go ahead and have the snack if it’s truly what you want. It helps this practice, not always be something that maybe we perceive as like a punishment. We want a rebel from it because we know what the outcome might be already.

This is not about willpower. It is about awareness.

And thank goodness it is something we can practice

Practical Tips to Manage Evening Cravings

If dinner around 5 or 6pm is leaving you hungry again by 9pm… try pushing your meals a little later!

  • Push your meals a little later. Hold off on breakfast by an hour or two and let everything shift with it.
  • Build your day backward in your tracking app. Start with your nighttime snack first and work your way back to morning.
  • Have go-to snacks that work with your macros AND actually hit the spot. It gives you something to look forward to each night and makes setting up your day so much easier when you already know what you are ending with!

To help you find some snacks that might do the trick: Mindful Eating: Appetite & Craving Scavenger Hunt 

Fun Snacks That Could Work

Other Salty

  • The Freestyle Green Olive Pack is 160 calories for the whole packet. (this is a client favorite… not mine. I think olives are evil… just a personal opinion LOL)
  • And the Boulder Canyon Single Serving Avocado Oil Chips are 230 calories and already portioned out for you

Other Sweet

  • Mini Perfect Bars are 130 calories and 6 grams of protein each.
  • Tiny Tate’s Cookies are 150 calories for 17 cookies… yes 17!
  • And the Purely Elizabeth Oatmeal Cups are 190 calories for the whole container which is really filling 🙌

Other XL Serving Size

  • Organic Pretzel Sticks are 110 calories for 35 pretzels.
  • Annie’s Cheddar Bunny Crackers are 140 calories for 54 bunnies.
  • And Simple Mills Mini Crackers are 140 calories for 44 crackers!

Pair the XL snacks with a protein or fat like cheese, peanut butter, or turkey slices for a more balanced snack!

Also check out:

The Harder Truth… and I Say This With All the Love

So I fully realize that you may have gotten to this point and said… but I don’t want to eat the calories and that is the problem.

And I hear you. 😔

As a coach, when I talk about a sustainable weight loss phase… this is it. This is the reasoning.

Sometimes the level of restriction that you put on yourself sets you up for this scenario no matter how you wanna go about it.

Sustainable weight loss is not about adding in a bunch of pleasurable things that just make life a little bit easier… it’s about not restricting so much that you feel out of control. That’s what sustainable is.

The truth is… a diet is not meant to be your way of life. It is a phase.

And there are two ways that phase can go completely sideways… and neither one of them gets you where you want to go.

The first is restricting so hard that you eventually blow it. You white knuckle it through the week… and then something gives. A bad day, a weekend, a moment where you just don’t have it in you anymore. And suddenly you’ve swung so far in the other direction that it cancels out everything you fought so hard for. That’s not a deficit. That’s a cycle.

The second is keeping things so slow and so comfortable in your deficit that the scale barely moves… and you start to lose faith in the whole thing. You get frustrated. You get wary. You start wondering why you’re even doing this. And eventually you just stop.

Neither extreme is the goal.

The goal is finding the version of a deficit that is actually doable without sending you to either edge. Challenging enough to create real progress… livable enough that you don’t lose your mind in the process. That middle ground is where the actual work happens. And thank goodness it exists… because it does. 😊

I have been on both sides of this. I restricted too hard, went back to my old ways, and found myself right back in a diet phase… except that time I was even more mad at myself and felt like an even bigger failure. It left me spending two years working on my mindset and what maintenance actually looks like.

Because I couldn’t possibly hate myself into a body that I would love… even if I lost the weight. Even if I put on the muscle. Even if I did all the damn things. It still caught up with me.

Takeaway

I know that last point might’ve stung a little bit. But I had to say it. It’s the right thing to do knowing that I’ve seen this side of it.

I really wholeheartedly hope this helps. I hope and pray it gives you a new way to think about the cravings… and maybe even the restriction. You deserve to feel in control without feeling deprived. Those two things can absolutely coexist.

You are not failing. You are just figuring it out. And that is exactly where I am here to meet you ♥️

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