Nighttime Eating – Satisfying Cravings

In episode 4 of the Simple Nourished Living podcast, (https://www.youtube.com/@MarthaMcKinnon) hosts Martha and Peter explore various topics related to cooking, nighttime cravings, and the mind-body connection. They share personal experiences with air frying and slow cooking, discuss the nature of cravings, and offer practical strategies for managing them.

The conversation emphasizes the importance of mindfulness and understanding the underlying reasons for cravings, while also inviting listeners to engage and share their own experiences.

Key Takeaways

This podcast journey is an accomplishment worth celebrating.

Experimenting with cooking methods can lead to new discoveries.

Nighttime cravings are common and can be addressed in various ways.

Mindfulness techniques can help manage cravings effectively.

Understanding the mind-body connection is crucial in addressing cravings.

Different strategies work for different people when it comes to cravings.

Herbal tea can be a satisfying alternative to snacks.

Distraction techniques can help reduce nighttime eating.

Cravings can be influenced by both physical and emotional factors.

Engaging with listeners can provide valuable insights and strategies.

Video Transcript

Martha McKinnon (00:01)
Hi, welcome to Simple Nourished Living’s podcast. I’m Martha McKinnon and this is my brother and partner Peter. Hi, how’s it going? I’m good. Are you having a good day?

Peter Morrison (00:08)
Hello. Good, how are you?

I am and I just wanted to mention before we get too into it, this is podcast number four.

Martha McKinnon (00:21)
Yeah, so that’s I think that’s an accomplishment. We’re showing our stick-to-itiveness.

Peter Morrison (00:27)
Yeah. Gotta just keep doing it and it’ll hopefully get easier.

Martha McKinnon (00:31)
Right?

Right. We’re hoping it’s going to get easier. We’ll find a flow. But until then, we’ll just keep plodding along. It’s what we do.

Peter Morrison (00:42)
Sounds good.

Martha McKinnon (00:44)
So what’s going well in your world? What’s it? Or what?

Peter Morrison (00:47)
What’s going well. Well, I’ve been doing some experimenting with air fryer baking and it was interesting.

Martha McKinnon (00:55)
Okay, how’s that going?

Peter Morrison (01:02)
So I did a small batch of cookies this morning and I think it’s something worth talking about on the website, but they looked good, but they kind of didn’t really cook all the way through in the middle. I think with the air circulating around and the outside looked really good and, you know, the toothpick test, they looked done, but then they kind of weren’t.

Martha McKinnon (01:20)
Mm-hmm.

Peter Morrison (01:28)
So then I did a second batch in the toaster oven and they looked… Totally different than the air fryer version. They puffed up, they looked really good, and they cooked all the way through. So I haven’t done a taste test yet, but I’ll do that this afternoon.

Martha McKinnon (01:36)
So maybe the toaster oven is a better way to go with some baking. Yeah. Or maybe like the temperature of the air fryer has to go lower.

Peter Morrison (01:40)
That’s true.

Martha McKinnon (01:47)
I’m just thinking that, you know, because the air fryer will cook, you know, faster and you’ve got that circulating air – that convection effect. So maybe lowering the temperature is the key.

Peter Morrison (01:55)
Right. In my particular air fryer, the Cosori Turbo Blaze has different cooking modes. So it has the air fry mode, it has a bake mode, it has… I’m not even sure all the modes, but, I think with the different modes, the fan runs at different levels. But I have to go back through and reread the manual.

Martha McKinnon (02:05)
Okay, that makes sense.

Peter Morrison (02:24)
Yeah, so it’s fun experimenting because, you know, a small batch of cookies for like five or six minutes. It’s a win-win.

Martha McKinnon (02:33)
Cool. And I’m excited because I actually have my dinner in the slow cooker. So I’m having, yeah, I’ve got a minestrone soup going. So I feel really good about that because it makes dinner time so much easier.

Peter Morrison (02:39)
Really? You’re… Ooh, very good. Traditional minestrone or did you do anything?

Martha McKinnon (02:52)
Yeah, well, just it was funny because, you know, I just feel like, these days, whatever I’m kind of looking for just sort of comes into my world. So I think it was it was an email from Steph O’Day. I get her slow living email and she had one of her minestrone soups there. So I basically, you know, followed that with some tweaks based on what I had added in just a few more veg because I happen to have it.

Martha McKinnon (03:18)
So yeah, just add some pasta at the end for the in the last few minutes. Yeah, to just add a little pasta to the to the veg and broth.

Peter Morrison (03:19)
Mm-hmm. Well, that’s always a good thing to know you don’t have to think about dinner at five o’clock.

Martha Mckinnon (03:34)
Right, right, because time can get away from me. You know, it’s like the computer, you know, the work here can draw me in.

Peter Morrison (03:38)
Absolutely.

Martha McKinnon (03:45)
Alright, so today’s topic is dealing with nighttime cravings. Do you ever get cravings for food?

Peter Morrison (03:53)
I do. Usually it’s something sweet or sometimes salty. If I exercising a lot or if I’m playing a lot of pickleball during the day, if I’m sweating a lot, I tend to crave salty things. Yeah.

Martha McKinnon (03:59)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I mean, that’s your body telling you you probably need some salt, right? Because you’re playing a lot of pickleball every day.

Peter Morrison (04:18)
A lot during the week. Yeah, for sure.

Martha McKinnon (04:21)
Yeah. So nighttime cravings is something that comes up for a lot of folks. And we’ve had a lot of readers write in asking. And in fact, we do have a post out on simple nourished livings website. So we will link to that in the show notes because it does include some really specific recipe, like sort of healthy recipes that people, lighter recipes that people have come up with to satisfy the cravings. And we probably won’t go into real specific detail on that. So if people want to look and get more ideas, that post is there. But do you have any thoughts about how do you deal with your cravings when they come up?

Peter Morrison (04:58)
I usually…

Martha McKinnon (05:08)
Do usually satisfy them? I guess it depends on how much you have cravings and have you figured out how to satisfy them? Do you feel like they’re overwhelming sometimes?

Peter Morrison (05:20)
Yeah, sometimes I absolutely try to meet the craving. Sometimes if it’s late and I just want to go to bed, I’ll just have a spoonful of Greek yogurt or something just to sort of get something. Because I really like yogurt or cottage cheese or something like that, which sounds kind of weird.

Martha McKinnon (05:25)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Peter Morrison (05:49)
And sometimes I will have a piece of dark chocolate or I also like a spoonful of nut butter, which kind of meets that sweet yet savory salty kind of craving.

Martha McKinnon (05:57)
Okay. Right. So I guess the bottom line is that there’s no one way to satisfy the craving or to deal with it. It’s really it’s like an individual exploration to figure out like what works, what doesn’t work. And some people, you know, have through the years figured out what works. And again, they’ve shared some of those ideas on the post. And it’s sometimes just trial and error, right, to to figure things out. so I guess.

Peter Morrison (06:14)
Right. Right.

Martha McKinnon (06:31)
The first thing you have to consider is it something you’re wanting to satisfy somehow or you wanting to just figure out how to distract yourself or how to figure out like other approaches to it because the one question might be is it real? Am I really hungry? You know, did I not feed myself nourish myself enough during the day?

So is it a is it a real need for food? Right. And that you would solve differently than you might just this. What is that saying you have about… there’s something about your mouth is lonely. What’s that quote you have?

Peter Morrison (07:00)
Let me see if I could find it really quick.

Martha McKinnon (07:03)
It’s kind of a cute little…

Peter Morrison (07:06)
Yeah, it’s a Japanese word, which I know when I find it, I’m gonna butcher it.

Martha McKinnon (07:13)
I don’t know how many Japanese listeners we have.

Peter Morrison (07:15)
It begins with a K. Let’s see, it should be…

Here it is.

Kuchisabishi. And it’s a Japanese word, allegedly meaning when you’re not hungry, but you eat because your mouth is lonely.

Martha McKinnon (07:26)
Ah. There it is. So sometimes your mouth is lonely, right? So that kind of craving, like are we talking about real craving? Are we talking about your mouth is lonely? Just, you know, you feel like you want something. Maybe it’s a habit, long ingrained habit where you just, you know, you’re used to turning on the television and, you know, bringing in the box of Oreos with you and you’ve just done it for years.

Peter Morrison (08:00)
Mm-hmm.

Martha McKinnon (08:02)
I know when we were growing up, often times Dad would just go for ice cream every evening, like every night. It was just after dinner, a big bowl of ice cream while they watch TV. And when you’re hanging out with him, you know, you tended to so, so that can be part of it. You know, it’s just a habit, but it can be hard to break, right? Cause you’re kind of used to it. So ideas for when you’re wanting to, so again, you can satisfy the craving, right?

Peter Morrison (08:17)
Mm-hmm.

Martha McKinnon (08:26)
That’s one option. And you’ve said you found ways with maybe a little bit of dark chocolate or a little bit of nut butter just to takes away that that peckishness or that need to have something savory or sweet. I found the same thing. Like sometimes just I, you know, sort of end the night with just like a spoonful of you know, Ben and Jerry’s just a spoonful, you know, it does it or a little piece of chocolate can be great.

Peter Morrison (08:52)
I’ve also found being a yogurt lover, I’ve also found I’m not a big ice cream person, but I do like the occasional spoonful, but I like to do like half ice cream, half yogurt actually. So I feel like I could meet that craving in a little bit healthier way because it doesn’t have to be all ice cream.

Martha Mckinnon (08:59)
Right, right. So there’s lots of, there’s lots of ways to satisfy it. Brenda, I know she started an herb and I’ve done this during at times too in the colder months is to have a cup of hot herb tea. And it’s just something can be really satisfying about that. just sometimes you just want, I don’t know, again, you want something in your mouth, you want to sip something while you’re watching TV or reading and

Peter Morrison (09:30)
Hmm.

Martha McKinnon (09:39)
So herb tea is something that has come up with a lot of readers and I know that’s something Brenda, our sister, has found works really well for her. So those are all options. You mentioned yogurt. One suggestion that comes up a lot is just making yourself your own frozen yogurt with frozen fruit and yogurt and stevia or your sweetener of choice and blending it together. that could be a a way to go.

But again, and there’s no there’s no right or wrong. I mean, people have talked about having a hard boiled egg Another thing is that sometimes we’re thirsty, right? We think we’re hungry, but we’re really not.

So with some people maybe that’s why the herb tea sometimes works for people. But have a glass of water, have a cup of tea and tell yourself, you know, in 20 minutes, if I’m still craving something then so that delayed gratification, then I’ll do something about it 20 minutes from now instead of doing it immediately.

Peter Morrison (10:33)
I’m looking through that post just to try to refresh. So one other suggestion is to brush your teeth right after dinner.

Martha Mckinnon (10:35)
Mm-hmm.

Right, which I think is a good one too. So that’s going to really delay, you know, it’s like if you go into the trouble, if you brush and floss, right, and you get all that done, it’s like, do I really, am I really going to eat this cookie when I’m going to have to go brush and floss again? If you’re lazy, you know, you might not. I know some people have just declared the kitchen closed after dinner. They just kind of in their mind, they shut the lights off.

Martha McKinnon (11:03)
It’s closed and they leave the kitchen and it’s like there’s sort of like a do not enter sign that they imagine in their minds it’s like the kitchen’s closed until tomorrow and so that’s something that some people have had success with. Distraction a lot of people say it’s just like you know giving yourself a manicure keeping your hands occupied because it’s really hard to be eating you know chips when you’re trying to dry your nails.

Peter Morrison (11:26)
Right. Well, and it’s going to occupy your mind. So you’re not going to be thinking about it. You could play solitaire. You could knit. Yeah.

Martha McKinnon (11:33)
Right. You can be reading a book. Yep. So all those distractions, right? Some people will like be exercising during the commercials. So there’s all kinds of things you can do to just mix it up and get yourself out of your normal routine and distract yourself. A really cool thing that’s come up for me recently, because I’m really sort of focusing on spending quite a bit of time in this whole concept of mindfulness and meditation is a technique called surfing, it’s a sort of a mindfulness technique for what’s called surfing the urge or surfing the craving, which is really successful for a lot of people too. Or it’s like you feel that urge come on and you kind of just tune into it instead of trying to like run away from it or distract yourself.

You actually turn towards it and because most cravings are described as having kind of a wave like pattern in that the urge kind of comes and then it kind of comes in, it gets stronger, it kind of peaks and then it just backs off. So that cravings have the same kind of pattern as a wave on the ocean and that by using that mindfulness technique, you know, anybody who’s done meditation or yoga can kind of relate to just paying attention and sort of noticing like, ooh, and talking through it and say, I’m thinking about Oreos right now.

You know, ooh, my mind is really telling me I want an Oreo and just kind of feeling it and breathing, relaxing, noticing and tuning into what’s happening in your body. Because there will be sensations that come up. You know, it’s like, where am I feeling this? Am I feeling it? Am I getting warm? You know, am I starting to salivate and just kind of pay attention?

Peter Morrison (13:08)
Mm-hmm.

Martha McKinnon (13:19)
So that can be a fun thing. And that’s another thing we can link to in the show notes. Jeff Warren is a pretty famous meditation teacher who I’ve been following and he has a really good guided meditation that takes you through that process and it goes really fast, like four or five minutes. So we’ll link to those notes too. So that’s another thing that people can consider.

Peter Morrison (13:42)
Now I know you’re not a doctor and we’re not giving medical advice and this is all based on our experience and it’s for educational purposes only, but I wanted to ask you because I guess I’ve never really thought about this before but is a craving is it created in the mind or is it an actual body is it an actual what am I trying to say is an actual physical

Martha McKinnon (13:44)
Right. Right.

Yeah, I don’t know. But that’s kind of interesting because I’m really fascinated by and I spend a lot of time in the whole world of the mind-body and I’ve read a lot and I continue to read and learn. And I think there’s probably what from what I understand. And again, I’m just a regular person who happens to have a real interest around this with no credentials at all and just put that out there. And so whatever I say, please go check it out and substantiate it out. Do your own research. Consult your own. Yeah, for sure. But I think it’s like, think it’s blurred and I think our understanding is continuing to shift in terms of the mind body.

And I read a book recently from a pretty well renowned researcher. And it was called the mind body because she believes you can’t really even separate mind from body anymore because they’re so interrelated. So it’s sort of like the chicken and the egg which comes first body can affect mind mind can affect body and it’s getting blurred. And our next episode is going to sort of really explore that a little bit because our next episode we’re going to talk about this milkshake experiment which is my gosh it just gives me the goosebumps.

When you really think about the implications of that. I’m not sure like if my guess is because this is just a guess is that it is sort of driven. But again, yeah, and hormonal, know, body mind is the mind causing the hormones to cause that sort of those because there are hunger hormones, there is a hunger hormone called ghrelin that you can measure in your blood that will go up, which does cause hunger.

And so it’s very complicated with your nervous system and your endocrine system and digestive system. So I’m not sure. It probably depends on who you talk to and where their area of expertise is what they would tell you in terms of where it starts.

Peter Morrison (15:58)
Right. It just made me think when I mentioned earlier about craving salt, it’s almost not even a craving. It’s a body. It’s your body saying I need this nutrient.

Martha McKinnon (16:19)
Right, right. So that’s really interesting. I took a course years ago, it was a year long course, online course at the Institute of Integrative Nutrition. And we explored a lot of aspects of nutrition in that course. And one of this man’s theories was that part of our problem with, you know, weight gain was the fact that we had become, because our diets were so nutrient depleted that sometimes he felt as though we were eating food, but we weren’t, we were sort of overfed, but undernourished and that he felt as though those, you know, if your body’s needing something like salt or a particular mineral or something that it’s going to maybe send these hunger signals to try to get you to give it what it needs.

Peter Morrison (16:53)
Mm.

Martha McKinnon (17:11)
And then you have your mind, right? Who I think we all sort of know differences between maybe physical hunger and sort of just those emotional cravings. So we often will eat when we’re not hungry because we’re bored, because we’re nervous, because we’re excited, because we’re happy, because we’re sad, I mean, you know, as sort of a comfort. so it gets complicated.

Peter Morrison (17:24)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Martha McKinnon (17:39)
And so you’d really got to just figure out what works for you. Again, depending upon what kind of craving you’re having, right? If you’re truly depleted in salt, because you’ve been exercising a lot and sweating, that’s really different than, you know, you’ve just finished this really wonderful dinner and like 20 minutes later, you want a big bowl of ice cream just because you want it because that’s what you did as a kid. It’s almost like those are two very different things.

Peter Morrison (18:07)
Right, you had written a post or two a little bit ago about a TV show or documentary from the UK about secret eaters. just wondering, because I have not watched any of those episodes, I’m just wondering if nighttime eating or snacking was, like, was that, because I could imagine, you’re sneaking around, you don’t want anyone to know.

Martha McKinnon (18:18)
Yeah. Right.

Yeah, you’re like hiding it. Yeah. So people I mean, in a secret in I mean, it’s a very interesting show if you can you can catch a few episodes out on in YouTube. And it’s very interesting because what it what it does for me, again, we talked we’ve talked in previous episodes here about mindless eating. So in my mind, it’s almost like the movie version now of mindless eating where it’s just showing a lot of the ways that people overeat without them even realizing it. In addition to kind of like, you know, sneaking around, they’re also just eating more than they realize because they’re oblivious to all of those influences, you know, in terms of plate plate size and, you know, the lighting at the restaurant and all those things that can affect us.

Peter Morrison (19:27)
I’m interested in readers and listeners and their possible ideas or techniques or strategies that you found that works for you.

Martha McKinnon (19:31)
Absolutely.

Right, so please, that would be wonderful if you would share in the comments below ideas that you have around this and techniques, strategies that you found that really work for you. That would be wonderful.

Peter Morrison (19:52)
Very good. Thanks everyone.

Martha McKinnon (19:57)
Take care, we’ll see you soon. Bye bye.

Peter Morrison (19:59)
Bye bye.