How to Stop Snacking At Night with Somatic Therapy and Intuitive Eating
We have all fallen into the trap of emotional eating, stress eating, boredom eating, or snacking at night. Picture this: it has been a very long and stressful day at work. You pick up your kids from daycare or school, get home, help make dinner, get them bathed, answer a few emails, kiss your partner, and then feel a deep sense of exhaustion and overwhelm settle in. Because this is the time of the day that you have “for you,” you want it to feel special, and you want to chill out. This is when you reach for that glass of wine, or that ice cream, or those chips. This is totally harmless every once in a while, but when it becomes a pattern, you start to get concerned.
Nighttime Snacking Isn’t a Failure—It’s a Signal
As a somatic therapist and certified Intuitive Eating counselor, nighttime snacking gets brought up to me a lot during sessions with clients. Stress eating at night is completely common and shouldn’t be seen as a failure. If anything, I hope that this helps you to reframe why you might struggle with nighttime snacking and give you some coping skills to try out instead. I want to be clear that eating at night is not a problem, and even eating based on a craving is not a problem. It can, however, start to have unwanted outcomes if emotional eating is the only skill people use at night to help regulate themselves.
Why Do I Snack At Night?
There are many reasons why you might be snacking at night, including your biology, emotional and psychological triggers, and nervous system dysregulation. Let’s explore each of these more.
Biological Reasons You May Be Snacking More at Night
Blood Sugar Dips
If you are like a lot of busy people, you have a busy life and/or an irregular eating schedule. This can cause blood sugar dips, which may be causing intense cravings at night, leading to nighttime snacking.
Restriction
You might also not be eating enough, which can also cause the same thing to happen. Restriction (whether intention or unintentional) begets binging behaviors. It is our body’s way of compensating for the felt sense of starvation.
Not Eating Regularly
Waiting too long to eat can also cause you to have nighttime cravings. There are many studies that provide evidence that eating regularly helps with overall mood and energy levels.
Emotional and Psychological Triggers Behind Nighttime Eating
Using Food as a Way to Regulate Your Stress Levels
The stress you are feeling throughout the day is most likely accumulating. Our lives basically require us to move from one activity to another without taking time for ourselves to relax, process, or unwind. This is a huge problem (and something that I work on regularly with my clients). Eating helps a lot of people to regulate their stress levels…leading to emotional eating. Many of our first experiences being soothed as young children involved food. As babies we are fed milk, when we are sick we are soothed with hot soup, and grandma makes our favorite cookies when we come to visit.
Food as a Transition Tool or Reward
Eating is an inherently sensory experience that grounds us. This is why a lot of people will use food as a reward, or as a way to help themselves transition from one thing to another. I, myself, have found that I was snacking at night in this way. It was a way to “signal” to myself that I was done with the day.
I found this to be especially prominent during COVID when people were working from home; there was difficulty transitioning between work life and home life. Many people found themselves eating more or drinking more alcohol to make this transition. Many studies have even come out about how COVID impacted our eating behaviors.
Using Snacks to Numb or Avoid Difficult Emotions
Nighttime snacking is also frequently used as a numbing tool. If we are too tired in the evening but still feeling lonely, overwhelmed, or dreading the next day, we might reach for that bag of trail mix instead of processing it. It is important to note that a lot of this is unconscious; we don’t always explicitly say “I’m sad, I will eat now” - it seemingly just starts to happen over time.
Why is my Nervous System More Dysregulated at Night, Leading to Nighttime Snacking?
The Unfinished Stress Cycle and Restlessness
From a somatic lens, the stress that has built up during the entire day can start to present as restlessness, compulsive eating, or thoughts about food that won’t go away. This is because the stress cycle has not been fully completed. Dr. Peter Levine describes this well in his book, “Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma,” that it is important for our nervous systems to fully explore all impulses or they will take up residency in the body as trauma, chronic stress, or unwanted sensation.
Any stress that has built up during the entire day can start to present as restlessness, compulsive eating, or thoughts about food that won’t go away. This can lead to emotional eating and snacking at night.
A Client Example: What Hypervigilance Can Look Like
Jessi has been an assistant to the CEO of her company for a few years now. When she started this position, she was good at bringing snacks, taking regular breaks away from the computer, and even having a good social life outside of work. As the job demand increased, she had a child, and a promotion was on the line, her ability to thoughtfully care for herself during the day waned. She noticed that during the day she would move quickly from one task to another, feeling a high heart rate, surges of cortisol, and hypervigilance around her boss. After Jessi would come home in the evenings, she would put her child to bed and still feel all of this nervous system activation without quite knowing what to do about it. Subconsciously, she realized that when she ate, she was able to feel a bit more in her body in a positive way, and that she was able to not think so much about how stressful her life had become. After being in somatic therapy for a while, she was able to see that her hypervigilance during the day was the culprit of most of her dysregulation. Jessi found out that by doing some simple things, like taking small breaks at work to orient to her surroundings, find safe places in her body, and even getting some movement in, that she was much less dysregulated when she would come home. This gave her the capacity to make different choices at night.
How Do I Cope With Nighttime Snacking?
To cope with nighttime snacking, you can use Intuitive Eating skills such as getting curious about your eating patterns, building nervous system awareness, and creating soothing rituals for yourself. Let’s explore ways you can cope with nighttime snacking.
Get Curious, Not Critical
I bet that if some of my Intuitive Eating clients are reading this, they can basically predict what I’m about to say – let’s start to see all behavior as data, not ammunition with which to criticize ourselves. The pattern of snacking or emotional eating is a signal, a “check engine light,” not something to pathologize into being some sort of moral failure. I often ask my clients to start to develop a meditation routine in order to increase their ability to hold non-judgmental awareness towards their behaviors.
Instead of being hard on yourself, ask yourself these questions during the time when you would normally find yourself reaching for the pantry:
Questions To Ask When You’re Experiencing A Craving:
Am I actually hungry right now?
How am I feeling?
Is there a possibility that I’m trying to distract myself right now?
How do I think I will feel if I engage in this eating behavior?
Is there something else I could do that might be just as satisfying?
Important Note: Eating At Night Is Not A Problem
One of the basic foundations of Intuitive Eating is that you have to be able to eat when you want to, when you are hungry, and have full food freedom while you’re doing it. Full food freedom means that you are able to eat what you would like to without judgment or fear. Here is a video of one of the founders of Intuitive Eating, Evelyn Tribole, talking about making peace with food. I highly recommend giving it a watch!
If you are unfamiliar with the 10 Principles of Intuitive Eating, you can read our Guide to Intuitive Eating or visit the Intuitive Eating website.
Build Nervous System Awareness
There are some basic tools that I help all of my somatic therapy clients use that are really helpful when trying to be more mindful about stress eating and snacking at night. Here are some ways to regulate your nervous system:
Grounding techniques.
Try the 5-4-3-2-1 method, or progressive muscle relaxation. These can help you get into a state where you can even begin to ask yourself some questions about what you really need or want to do during this time of the day. Most of the time, this is all you really need!
Orienting.
Look around your space, moving your head, neck, chest, and eyes. Bonus points for moving your jaw a little bit! Orienting can help the nervous system understand that it is not in danger.
Grounding is a great way to start to get into the nice “rest and digest” part of the nervous system. Here is a video that talks more in depth about orienting and a guide on how to do itMindfulness meditation.
Mindfulness allows you to be able to track sensation in the body a bit better. This will help you to be able to begin to notice the difference between being emotionally overwhelmed/fatigued and being physically hungry. I often refer my clients to the Headspace app which has a free 7 day trial. It is a wonderful tool for understanding how and why we meditate.
Local to Kansas City? Read our list of best places to practice mindfulness in KC!
Identify Emotional Drivers
Not everybody struggles with stress eating every night. Sometimes people struggle on days where there has been more stress or overstimulation. Therefore, it can be helpful to make a chart or journal about the patterns that you might be seeing with your nighttime snacking.
If you are able to identify a clear emotional trigger for stress eating, then it will be important to have some clear coping skills that you can start to do during this transition from day to night in order to help regulate yourself on the front end. Again, it is always helpful to ask yourself “what am I actually needing right now?”
Important Note: Food Journaling Is Not For Everyone
If you have a history of being very restrictive with food, especially if that history involved religious tracking of what you ate, this exercise might do more harm than good. As with any advice you get, make sure you are listening to what actually works for you and make the best choice for you.
Create Soothing Rituals
Replace or add supportive habits that bring comfort without judgment. Here are some examples of soothing nervous system regulation rituals you can incorporate instead of snacking or stress eating:
Nighttime yoga or stretching.
Drinking your favorite tea out of a special mug.
Cuddle with a partner or a pet.
Do something creative, such as paint your nails or draw.
Take a warm bath.
Nourish Fully During the Day
Honor your hunger throughout the day and maintain a balanced blood sugar. Even if the meals aren’t beautifully balanced, be sure to eat. This will greatly help you in fighting off that sense of intense hunger during the evenings. Make sure your meals during the day are satisfying as well and involve fun foods!
If you need help with figuring out how to nourish yourself the best way that you can, it might be important to get help from a professional dietition. Here are a few Dietitians in Kansas City (and beyond) that I trust:
The counseling directory on the Intuitive Eating website also has a list of trained therapists, dietitians, and nutritionists
Fully nourishing your body during the day can help you fight off hunger during the day. Focus on balanced, satisfying meals and don’t for get to involve some fun foods!
When Should I Get Help For Emotional or Stress Eating?
You might consider therapy with Embodied Healing KC if doing these things on your own feels overwhelming or you don’t even know where to start. Intuitive Eating Therapy can help you to identify your patterns, help you to get to know your emotions and sensations a bit better, and come up with some good coping strategies. Our licensed therapists might also help you to work through some deep underlying issues that could be causing nervous system dysregulation in the first place.
Happy healing, friends!
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Frequently Asked Questions About Snacking At Night
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Nighttime snacking often stems from unmet needs—emotional, physical, or both. Stress, fatigue, irregular meals, and unresolved tension can all drive cravings in the evening.
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Not at all. Eating at night is normal and not inherently unhealthy. It only becomes problematic when it's the only tool used to cope with stress, fatigue, or emotional discomfort.
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Somatic therapy helps you build awareness of your nervous system, identify stress patterns, and regulate through grounding, orienting, and body-based techniques.
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Yes. Restriction and irregular eating can lead to low blood sugar and strong cravings later in the day. Nourishing your body consistently can reduce this rebound effect.
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Unresolved trauma can cause chronic stress and dysregulation, which may lead to nighttime snacking as a way to self-soothe or manage emotional overwhelm.
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Try grounding techniques like the 5-4-3-2-1 method, mindful eating, or creating soothing rituals like stretching, tea, or journaling. Get curious about what your body truly needs.
Stevie Olson-Spiegel is a Licensed Therapist and Somatic Experiencing Practitioner located in Kansas City. She uses Somatic Experiencing as her main body-based trauma healing modality, as well as EMDR. As an Intuitive Eating Counselor, she uses these principles to help her clients challenge their relationship with their cultural misconceptions about their body and food.
