Eating Too Much Affects You the Next Day

Like lack of sleep, a nightly bowl of chips or ice cream you eat may affect your mood and motivation, making you less helpful to coworkers and unproductive the next day at work.

It’s easy to fall into the habit of eating ice cream or potato or corn chips while watching TV or playing video games to relax at night. You might even heat up a macaroni and cheese frozen dinner at 11 p.m. despite your full dinner earlier.

Missing sleep can definitely make you grumpy and less productive when you get to work the next day. But what about that night-time binge?

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To answer that question, researchers at North Carolina State University recruited 97 full-time employees to answer questions for 10 consecutive workdays — before work, at the end of the workday, and before bed.

For example, employees reported before bed about whether they felt they’d overeaten that evening, ate too much junk food, or ate too late. All of those counted as “unhealthy eating behavior” — though the participants decided themselves how much was too much.

When the volunteers fell into unhealthy eating behavior in their own opinion, they were more likely to report headaches, stomachaches, and diarrhea the next morning, or feel guilty or ashamed about their eating.

During the workday, those morning reactions made it more likely that they’d avoid tasks or work meetings or socializing, and they were less likely to help coworkers.

The bottom line: unhealthy eating at night isn’t just a problem for your waistline, it can also affect your mood and work performance.

The more emotionally stable the participants, the less effect unhealthy eating had on their health or mood and workplace activity.

The researchers did not investigate whether the volunteers were also drinking at night, whether sugar or caffeine made a difference, and what people ate during the workday.

So if you want to be a happy, helpful camper on the job, managing your eating could go a long way.

One good step is to eat in a regular pattern rather than skip meals. Experiment to see whether eating breakfast helps you avoid eating at midnight. If you’re hungry but put off meals, you could easily end up overeating later in the day.

The Institute for the Psychology of Eating, which organizes retreats and trains mind-body eating coaches, teaches clients to pay close attention to body cues. Are you hungry? Hunger can trigger a rumble or a feeling of lightness in your belly. You might get a headache, or your head may feel heavy. Ignoring your hunger will backfire. Stop when you’re full. That sounds simple, but many of us don’t pay attention. We eat for other reasons: we’re bored, the food is a treat, or it’s too hard to stop.

Slight fullness feels good, and you’ll be clear-headed and energized. Being overfull is uncomfortable.

Eat good fats like olive oil and avocados to keep you full during the day. Snack on nuts or nut butter on a piece of celery. Add flaxseeds or chia seeds to a grain like morning oatmeal.

Slow down when you eat. Appreciate each bite. This makes it easier to feel when you’re full, and you’ll be more relaxed and enjoy your meal more, while eating less. It’s especially important to slow your eating at night when you’re often trying to defuse stress from the day. Think about lighting candles and dimming overhead lights at every dinner. Breathe deeply and observe whether your appetite declines.

Night-time eating is often a way to comfort ourselves. There may be challenges you’d be better off facing directly. If you slow down, a solution may come to mind, or you may notice a feeling you had pushed aside.

Find allies. How we eat is often based on the eating of the other people in our lives. We all eat more at large gatherings, for example. It’s harder to skip ice cream at night if your husband is filling his bowl.

Your family may not join you if you decide to conquer night-time eating, so it can be helpful to find allies. Overeaters Anonymous (OA) describes itself as “a community of people who support each other in order to recover from compulsive eating and food behaviors. We welcome everyone who feels they have a problem with food.” From the first meeting in 1960, it has grown to about 7,000 meetings in more than 80 countries.

Note that the program isn’t focused on obesity or diets or weight, but on compulsive eating. If you are always thinking about food, or you can’t stop eating certain foods after the first bite, food may be a problem for you even if your weight is in an ideal range. If food is your main reward or comfort in a stressful life — or your main fun in a dull one — thinking about how you can change that situation could bring great rewards, comfort, and fun.

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