Why I Can’t Stop Eating in the Evenings
Exploring the root cause of my evening cravings…
For years, I’ve been trying to figure out why, after having had a good dinner, I get that hunger pang late in the evening. After some research, I found some interesting reasons.
I wasn’t eating enough during the day. Most of us don’t eat much at breakfast and sometimes don’t have much time for lunch, so we snack on something and keep working. By the evening, we feel hungry.
This happens because, over time, your brain looks at how much you’ve consumed over the whole day and, actually, over the last weeks and months, and it wants to make up for any perceived deficit.
Your brain is going to draw you to the high-calorie foods because it wants more energy, and these foods (mainly sweets) take up less space in the stomach.
Decision fatigue is another reason. We have a very specific part of our brain that is involved in decision-making, and we have to use it a lot. That part of our brain gets exhausted, and making decisions at the end of the day gets harder. If we wait until the evening to try and figure out what to have for dinner, you’re going to end up ordering take-out or putting some quick, high-calorie meal.
