As a self-professed slave to habit, an evening snack has been a part of my life at least since early high school.
The routine that started with me sitting on the edge of my bed with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, thinking THIS might be the thing to bump my weight up and increase my football playing time, has lived many lives.
Those precious brave souls who have always been able to eat whatever they want and feel good might not understand this. I’m not talking about feeling good physically. I’m talking about the mental agony I’ve felt when I’ve over eaten, the guilt that dominates my brain until I’m able to justify it away. It wasn’t until semi-recently that I was able to really conceptualize the eating disorders I’ve worked through, but for a period of time, an evening snack was a strange way for me to gain back control in a life that I didn’t feel a ton of control over.
I’ve always had food issues, and I’m sure they’ll be discussed ad nauseum on this forum, but my evening snack has always been the place my stresses about food have manifested. I’ve figured out that the equation counter-intuitively seems to be that if I’m feeling good about myself, a snack becomes less important, and if I’m not, then fucking give it to me. The reliance on food always reared its ugliest head during my evening snack, so here are some things I’ve come to think.
The answer can change. As I said above, I’m a habit freak. So sometimes it is really hard for me to peel off autopilot. For example, I eat something at night FAR more often than I ask myself if I even want to eat something. The question of whether I’m going to eat shouldn’t come down to the routine or the time on the clock. It should come down to whether or not I want something. This “answer can change” mentality also applies to the size of the snack, or what the snack is, which leads me to:
Break it down. It’s sort of hard to explain, but the idea of “evening snack” has had seasons of meaning a certain food. So, for example, say for awhile, my snack has been yogurt, peanut butter, and cereal. I’m not as inclined to think that it could be just one of that bucket, or two of that bucket. The decision to have a snack meant all of those, with no in between. So imagine on days that I was iffy about a snack. Wouldn’t it be just marvelous if I could think “oh well I’m not THAT hungry, I’ll just have a spoonful of peanut butter.” I’m working on that one. Just tonight, my girlfriend and I had that happen to us (she’s spectacular at checking in with her real hunger levels). We baked banana bread this afternoon (shoutout quarantine basicity) and both were trying to figure out if we could justify having two slices. The conversation turned to “well we could have less rice at dinner.” At that point, one of us said “ya know we could just have one.” I didn’t realize how much stress was in me until I felt it come out of shoulders once that decision was made. I didn’t really want two slices of banana bread. Something in me was objecting as my lizard brain thought, “We made this today. It’s only fresh for so long, xyz.” I’m learning to slow down for a second, take stock, and THEN make a decision.
I actually had to stop thinking about my evening snack to figure this out. I went through a period where I just stopped eating three hours before I figured I’d go to bed. This was really useful for me, even if it didn’t come from the greatest of motivations. If I recall correctly, I had gained a bit of weight in college (surely it was eating too late at night, and NOT copious drinking and lack of sleep), and I was trying to figure out a way to rectify that situation. I yo-yoed to the wrong end of the spectrum and realized I wasn’t eating enough, BUT I’d broken my evening snack dependence.
Leaving college and being an adult with responsibilities helped me conceptualize my place in the world, but it’s probably fitting that one of my biggest realizations came from food. I was having dinner with a friend, and they couldn’t finish their particularly large portion. As they offered it to me and I dug in, they remarked, “God I’m so stuffed I don’t know how you do it.” It wasn’t until after I said “Yeah me too.” and registered their look of confusion that I realized that just because food was in front of me, I didn’t HAVE to eat it. I was stuffed too. I had a bit of an epiphany moment on my way home thinking about all the things I could apply that to. I didn’t have to have the next drink. If I’d decided to workout, I could do a light workout instead of killing myself. I could just choose?
Furthermore, the idea of volume not being the vehicle for enjoyment has opened a ton of doors for me. My mom always told me “everything in moderation,” and it’s embarrassingly taken me too long to figure out that her pleas to get little anorexic Andrew to eat a piece of cake on his birthday weren’t just about food.
At times, I’ve toed the line of the “If I’m going to do it, I might as well fucking DO it” mentality. This has manifested in every aspect of my life from reading to partying. It’s less an addictive personality than an “in for a penny, in for a dollar” personality, but what considering my evening snack has taught me is that if I’m in for a penny, I can just be in for a penny.
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