How many times have you found yourself eating a guilty late-night snack knowing that it is definitely not the healthiest thing you did all day? Well, you are not the only one. There is even a name for it: Night eating syndrome. According to Dr. Michael Craig Miller, 1 or 2 out of 100 people in the general population may be affected by this syndrome. It doesn’t end there. Even if you are not dealing with the night-eating syndrome, you may be an emotional eater. Emotional eaters usually find themselves binge eating or late-night eating (or both) as a coping mechanism.

Although you may know that eating late at night can throw your metabolism off, disturb your weight loss journey and even disturb your sleep, it’s still hard to resist the temptations. In most cases, food acts as a coping mechanism or an easy habit that keeps your mind busy and off of important matters. But, how do people turn food into emotional support? At what point do we develop this powerful attachment to junk food? And, most importantly, how can we change it?

Here are the two most common reasons for this kind of attachment to food:

#1 Subconscious eating habits

Just like many other habits and routines, eating patterns come from the subconscious mind. The subconscious mind is the term that Sigmund Fred came up with to describe the area in the mind which is not in surface awareness. According to Freud’s theory, the subconscious mind takes about 60 to 90 % of the total mind power, making the subconscious mind the real decision-maker behind everyday actions.

The majority of the subconscious mind develops from the time we are born until about puberty. Think about a baby; Who will they be surrounded by? Usually, a baby is heavily influenced by its primary caregivers. Whatever the immediate family does, their way of living, their habits, will easily and quickly get accepted by the baby’s fresh mind. As the baby grows, social interactions start, and the effects of the culture and environment start influencing the subconscious mind as well. Just like this, without intentionally selecting which habit to take and which one to leave, the child develops his/her subconscious mind. As we grow older, sometimes we wonder “Why do I think this way about myself?” without realizing that we’ve been merely mirroring our parents unconsciously the whole time!

During subconscious development, also, eating habits are learned. Whatever the child gets used to eating or the diet the family is following ultimately becomes the future eating habits for the person. How many times were you rewarded with a delicious snack growing up? Did you hear “Finish your dinner and I will give you dessert” or “Don’t cry, I will get you your favorite candy”? With simple parental cues like the example, food becomes a trigger for the mind’s reward mechanism. It makes the person feel rewarded, fulfilled, and approved. This subconscious reward mechanism follows throughout adult life unless it is consciously brought up to the person’s attention and changed. And if you are an emotional eater, there is a good chance that you are just following “what mama gave you”.

What can you do?

Take a moment to recognize the eating habits that you learned from your parents, society, and the culture you grew up with. What were the most common foods cooking at home? What was the general dinner time? How was your family’s attitude toward food? Was it “Finish everything on your plate” or “Don’t force yourself”? Try to make connections as to how these old subconscious tendencies are affecting your current diet. This will enable you to approach the problem objectively and realize the problematic areas in your eating habits.

If you find that you are using food as an escape to a calm or relaxed state, instead, replace it with a healthy habit such as meditation, tai chi, or yoga. If you are using food to deal with anger, depression, or anxiety, try self-hypnosis or deep breathing exercises. If you are using food as a coping mechanism you can also try subconscious therapies.

#2 The Sugar addiction

Another reason for late-night eating or emotional eating is sugar addiction. Currently, Americans are consuming about 17 teaspoons of sugar, about 3 times higher than the recommended sugar intake by the American Heart Association. Recently, it is debated that sugar can be considered to be a substance of abuse because of its role in triggering the happiness hormones, dopamine, and opioids, released in the brain. In one research looking for the neurological evidence of sugar addiction, after testing 4 components of addiction -bingeing, withdrawal, craving, and cross-sensitization- it’s found that sugar can create dependency.

According to another research published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, sugar addiction is a serious and destructive as cocaine or heroin addiction. It can stimulate the same areas in the brain inducing reward & pleasure or mood changes. One of the reasons why many people don’t even realize that they have a sugar addiction is that it is widely used and accepted in society. Almost all the foods, from bread to “healthy” smoothies, can easily contain high contents of sugar. Most of the sugar a person intakes during the day doesn’t even come from sweet foods. You may find yourself unconsciously eating chips, protein bars, or seasoned nuts, not knowing you are following nothing but an urge or craving.

What can you do?

The first step to breaking any addiction is the awareness of the addiction. After recognition, it needs to be treated as seriously as other drug abuse problems. Start paying attention to your daily sugar intake and the sources of the sugar. You can decrease the amount that you are taking in slowly by eliminating the low-resistance foods. For example, if you don’t care so much about having fruit juice but you are having It anyway, eliminate the fruit juice right away. Every day, challenge yourself to take out at least one sugar-heavy food from your diet.

Another strategy is writing down in a journal everything you consumed during the day every night before you sleep. This will allow you to see all the good and bad things you put into your body clearly. By writing, you are not allowing any junk food to slip away from your conscious awareness. This will help you to see your patterns and toxic areas in your diet.

Finally, just like in any addiction, it’s important that you learn how to surf the cravings. First, you will need to become aware of your trigger points. What makes you crave? What emotions create an urge? Every time your trigger is creeping up, remind yourself that you don’t really need to eat right now, it’s the urge that makes you want to eat. Cravings are like waves. Just like waves, cravings build up until they reach the peak and just break down in a couple of minutes. However, if one can resist an urge, the urge disappears with other distractive thoughts. With each resistance to the craving, the urge gets weaker and weaker. So, you will realize that every time you resist your craving, your craving gets weaker and the time between each urge lengthens.