Aaron Hartman, MDFunctional Medicine Specialist | Clinical Researcher

Cynthia Thurlow | Why You Can't Stop Craving Junk Food at Night

23 Oct 2024 · 1 min

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Cynthia Thurlow explains why you crave junk food at night: if you don't eat enough protein during the day, your body keeps hunting for calories to hit its protein target, usually by raiding the pantry for chips and ice cream. Meeting your daily protein goal cuts the cravings.

Chapters

If you're not hitting your protein threshold, your body is going to look for additional calories, generally from fat and carbohydrates. It's not like you're going to crave an avocado. You're going to be craving light chips and junk and sweet things and ice cream. And so that protein leverage hypothesis for me is a very important concept to help people understand why it was so important. Be hitting those protein macros, because if you don't, you're going to pray food. You're going to wonder like, why am I going into my pantry or my freezer, or why am I baking brownies at 7 o' clock at night? Because your body is looking for a way to augment that caloric intake that you should have consumed during your day.