Late Night Snacking? 3 Big Reasons to Fight The Urge

Maybe you’ve been guilty of rummaging through the refrigerator late at night.
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Or late night cravings just get the best of you – and before you know it you are digging in the pantry looking for fruit snacks… a bag of chips… or a token Twinkie (and you don’t even like Twinkies).

And while most of us have suspected this might not be such a great idea – it’s easy to slip into the destructive habit. Recently a few studies came out taking a closer look at a few side effects of this gnarly habit:

• One small study published in the International Journal of Obesity found that young women who ate late at night decreased the number of calories they burned and decreased their glucose tolerance (their body’s ability to process blood sugar).

 

• A second small Japanese study found that eating late dropped fat burning and boosted total cholesterol and LDL cholesterol levels in the blood.

Now these are small studies – but I believe more findings like these will build up.

Why?

Let’s consider what happens when you snack at night:

#1: Drops Inhibitions

Typically, after a long day of work, putting out fires and taking care of others - inhibitions have dropped like a cinder block in the river (which is a lesson infomercials learned years ago). With dropped inhibitions comes worse decisions such as whipping out the Nutter Butters instead of say, the kale chips.

#2: Mindless Eating

And late night snacking is usually combined with watching TV, streaming or scrolling which sends people into a frenzy of mindless eating. And from mindless eating comes an easy way to pound a few extra hundred calories.

#3: Disrupts Brain Washing

This is one of the most fascinating reasons against late night snacking.
During sleep your body literally “washes” your brain of neurotoxic waste and proteins such as beta-amyloid and alpha-synuclein, which are linked to Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. (And yes, it’s a real thing and this newly discovered system is called the glymphatic system). But if you have just devoured an extra meal or ate too close to bed, this system gets bogged down – because you’ve forced your body to divert blood flow for digestion, instead of ‘deep cleaning’.

Anyway, there’s some late night food for thought.

So the next time, you crack open the pantry in the middle of the night, maybe these reasons will come rushing back to you – to put off your snacking.

(at least until the next morning)

​Kelan Ern