Should You Eat Late At Night When You’re Hungry?

Last night  at about 12:30 (I guess that’s early this morning), as I was lying down to go to bed, I started feeling like I could be getting hungry. I wasn’t sure if I was just really tired or if I actually needed some food. At 1:00 I still hadn’t fallen asleep and by then it was confirmed – I needed to eat.

You should eat when you’re hungry, right?… Right?

If you speak the language of fitness, the answer isn’t so simple. Fitness people everywhere would tell me not to eat. They would tell me that eating at night causes weight gain.

A lot of people believe this and when I say a lot, I mean A LOT. I’ve heard people say this at the gym roughly 134,000 times. “Yeah I don’t eat after {insert time of choice here} because I’m trying to lose weight”.

This line of thinking is a myth.

It’s also spectacularly unhealthy.

As shocking as this may seem to a traditional ‘fitness person’, the amount of food we eat during the day doesn’t always line up well with what our bodies need. Guess what happens when we don’t eat as much as our bodies need? Our bodies produce more cortisol. Guess what happens when we have more cortisol? We get bigger bellies and smaller muscles.

Do you tend to get more irritable when you try to lose weight? If so, this is the likely cause. You’re under-eating and your under-eating is causing increased cortisol in your body.

I used to subscribe to a lot of this type of fitness hogwash. I didn’t eat at night, I ate six meals a day, blah blah blah. Guess what, I was still out of shape because I hadn’t figured out what really mattered. I would stress my body out with ridiculous diets, push my cortisol through the roof, screw up my insulin response, and would then be super surprised when I gained 6 pounds in a weekend of gluttony. Tragic.

Last night when I figured out that I was hungry, I went into my kitchen and made a full blown meal at 1:00 in the morning. Yep – I ate a full plate of food. It was the healthy thing to do.

When I wake up in the morning, I feed my body. It’s the healthy thing to do.

When I get hungry during the day, I feed my body. Again, it’s the healthy thing to do.

At this point, my body knows that it’s going to get healthy foods. I eat them 90% of the time. I eat a lot and I eat often. Since that’s the case, my body isn’t getting completely stressed out. When I eat foods that aren’t so healthy, I don’t gain a million pounds like I used to.

This last weekend, I devoured half a pan of lemon lemonies (they’re like brownies). I literally would have gained two pounds in my past life. Now? Nothing. My body doesn’t want to be fat anymore. I’m not set up hormonally to gain two pounds in 24 hours.

If you don’t trust your appetite, start giving your body a lot of healthy food. Stick with that kind of food most of the time. If you do, your appetite will stop leading you down the wrong path and your body will change drastically.

1. Why Am I Always Hungry Unless I Eat Grains And Carbs?
2. Can You Eat Bananas on the Paleo Diet?
3. Why Am I Always Hungry? The 7 Crucial Principles Of Successful Appetite Control
4. Can You Eat Nuts on the Whole 30?
5. Can You Eat Strawberries on a Paleo Diet?

Tags: diet, eating at night, fitness, food, late night eating, lose weight