How often do you snack after dinner, what do you eat and what are your sure-fire strategies to curb night-time munchies? Here are the results from our February SmartShape online survey.Take the current survey | Past survey results | Subscribe
Night-time munchies are a common experience. About half (56%) of survey participants eat after dinner 4 or more nights a week. One quarter eat after dinner 6 or 7 nights a week.
How often and what you eat?
When you eat after dinner it's only once for around 70% of people. Less than 10% said they eat 3 or more times after dinner. Half the time post-dinner snacks are either equally chocolate or fruit. Yoghurt was the next most frequent food eaten after dinner (40%), followed by biscuits (35%), ice-cream (20%) and bread (19%).
Non-hungry eating
If you eat something after dinner it must be because you are hungry, right? Wrong! Only 4% of survey respondents said they were genuinely hungry 100% of the times they eat after dinner. Over two-thirds (70%) said they were hungry some or none of the times they ate after dinner.
This means that a lot of post-dinner snacking is triggered by factors other than hunger. The top-rating trigger was habit, for 50% of respondents. One person said, “I usually eat chocolate but I eat it for no reason.” And another, “It's only out of habit and a mind thing that you think you need it.”
Other eating triggers included boredom (44% of cases), hunger (36%) and your partner offering food (27%). Other reasons for nocturnal snacking included:
- Want chocolate
- Need something sweet
- Pleasure
- Just love cheese, and
- I know there is something yummy just waiting for the eating
Is night-time eating a problem?Over half (58%) of our survey agreed they would like to stop eating or would like to eat less after dinner to stay in shape. And there were more people who thought eating after dinner was a problem for them than those who didn't see it as a problem.
Strategies to curb post-dinner munchies
If you'd like to cut back on unnecessary calories consumed at night, try these practical strategies suggested by SmartShape subscribers in our survey:
- Stay out of the kitchen
- Get out of the house
- Go for a walk
- Keep my mind busy doing things
- I save a portion of my fruit or yoghurt for after dinner
- I started buying ice-cream in the single-serve containers so I only have a single serve rather than 1 or 2 bowls
- Drink water
- Have a cup of tea
- Clean your teeth straight after dinner
- Not preparing food for the next day
- I eat late most nights, so snacking after dinner isn't really a problem for me
- Rarely buy foods that will tempt me after dinner
- Go to bed earlier
- I have a rule that I must stay up 2 hours after eating dinner, so if I want to eat I look at the time and see if it's possible for me to stay up that late
And lastly…- My wife padlocks the cupboards and puts the key under her pillow
In combination with these useful strategies, remember that the triggers listed above reveal the secret to reducing night-time munchies may lie in breaking habits, avoiding hunger or boredom and having a word with your partner about offering some love instead of food after dinner. Who responded to the survey?
98 people of which 84% were female
A big thank you to all who completed the survey!
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