Generally, your questions influence how I write my weekly articles. I mentioned that I usually only have salad and soup for dinner, and I received many comments like, “I can’t keep dinner light, I get very hungry in the evening, I want to eat more and more in the evening”… and so on. Seeing that this is a common problem, I decided to address it. If you can’t keep yourself away from the refrigerator in the evenings, then this article is for you 🙂

First of all, eating dinner early and lightly is very important for health. As evening approaches and sunset nears, our metabolism begins to slow down. With the setting sun, our bodies calm down, rest, and prepare for sleep. Our body’s job at night is to activate detoxification – to cleanse the toxins we’ve accumulated throughout the day. But if we burden our bodies with digestion in the evening, it can neither fully perform the necessary detoxification process nor complete digestion.

Ideally, dinner should be finished by 7 PM at the latest, or even better, 6 PM. Vegetables, salads, and soups are very suitable options for dinner. It takes some time for the body to adjust to eating a small, early dinner. During this time, you may experience nighttime hunger pangs. Initially, during this transition period, it’s very helpful to satisfy these nighttime hunger pangs with things like cucumbers, carrots, and lettuce. This will keep you, your hands, and your mouth occupied. After this transition period, once you get used to the convenience, your habit of eating late at night will disappear.

I’m saying this assuming you’ve consumed all your nutrients during the day. If you still crave food at night, it indicates that something was missing during the day. Are you sure you ate all your eggs, yogurt, legumes, healthy fats, meat, vegetables, and fruits during the day? You can ask yourself that first. Whatever is missing (which is usually fruit) manifests as a craving for sweets in the evening.

Of course, there’s also the psychological aspect of eating. If you’ve consumed all your nutrients and felt full during the day, but still can’t control yourself in the evening, you can also look at other things that should be satisfying you. Love, affection, career, spirituality, exercise, joy, enjoying life, etc. These hungers also manifest as a nighttime craving for the refrigerator. Perhaps a hug is what should satisfy us, but if we’re far from that, we might find ourselves in the arms of chocolate. By satisfying the right cravings, we can prevent food attacks.