Oh the evening munchies.
Are they de-railing your otherwise pretty good diet and slowing, or even stopping, your quest for weight loss?
If so, it’s not just you!
But, how is it even possible to be so ravenously hungry an hour after dinner, when during the day you have no issue going between meals?
Is it just that being busy and distracted means you don’t notice you’re hungry?
I thought this an appropriate time to write about this – Easter usually provides an unwelcomely welcome influx of chocolate into the house, which usually beckons us around 8pm, just as we sit on the sofa and relax.
So. What can I share with you about these evening munchies? I believe the power is in the understanding. If you can see what’s happening, it gives you much more power to take control.
The first thing to look at is whether you could indeed be hungry. You can tell if you’re truly hungry by asking whether you would eat a ‘proper meal’ – roast chicken and broccoli for example? Or do you want something specific? The latter being a craving and not true hunger.
Assuming you’re suffering with a craving and not true hunger, the next thing to look at is what could have triggered it. Were you too hungry earlier in the day? Perhaps you missed breakfast, or got too hungry between lunch and dinner – although your tummy might be full now, your body hasn’t managed to shake the stress it felt from being too hungry.
Perhaps you’ve eaten too much sugar today, or just too many carbs. Could you be having a sugar crash?
The next stage is to think about other, more immediate, triggers. Could you be thirsty? If you haven’t had a drink for a while, have one (water!) and wait ten minutes and see if it does the trick. Are you tired? If so, go to bed! Eating is not going to improve your sleep quality! Is it just habit? If so, break it! Stop sitting on the sofa and trying to fight your cravings – start having a bath in the evenings, break your routine.
My final thought about the munchies is that willpower is a muscle. It gets stronger the more you use it. Learn what’s causing your munchies and deal with issues as much as possible. Then power through, exercise that willpower – you are NOT hungry an hour after dinner. And by next week, it will be so much easier to say no. In fact, you might not even think about it.
Now for something unconnected to evening munchies, but very good news about the nutrition training our doctors receive.
This week, it was reported that medical students learn nothing about nutrition during their 5-6 years studying medicine, apparently only between 10-24 hours is allocated to discussing nutrition.
Which is a shame, as Dr Rangan Chatterjee (the fabulous GP from Doctor In The House) has said that about 80% of the patients he sees have issues relating to diet and lifestyle – including type 2 diabetes, and depression.
The British Medial Journal was quoted as saying that its time the medical profession accepted that nutrition is key to good health and that there is a massive body of research available which needs to be published – which they hope to do in a new journal launching this year.
I think this is a really interesting turn. Its been said for years that the nutritionists of today will become the doctors of tomorrow, and I hope it is time for the tables to turn.
One of the medical students interviewed as part of the BBC article summed the issue up excellently – she said “I think there needs to be an image change of how doctors perceive nutrition, but also how its presented to students’.