I Crave Sweet and Salty Between 8-9pm. What Do I Do?
15 Dec 2025 · 6 min
JJ Virgin addresses evening sweet-and-salty cravings, which often signal stress and blood-sugar swings. She recommends stopping eating three to four hours before bed and replacing the habit with stress relief like walks or meditation rather than fighting the urge to eat.
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I Crave Sweet and salty between 8 and 9pm what do I do? This is JJ Virgin, four time New York Times bestselling author, celebrity nutrition expert and Fitness hall of Famer. I've been on a lifelong quest for answers to the toughest health questions, and now I'm sharing what I found with you. Welcome to Ask the Health Expert. Wandering realist from Instagram says closing the kitchen after dinner is the only hard part of this illustration for me. Cravings of sweet and salty between 8 and 9pm Any suggestions? I have a lot to say about this one. I'll be right back. Stay with me.
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All righty. So in my perfect world, our kitchen would lock down after dinner. Like, you would have the full blown. Like, you know, locked doors, can't get in and you couldn't. They wouldn't open up again until after a good night's sleep in the morning. And that would be that. Like, solve that problem. One of the most significant things that you can do for your health is to stop eating three to four hours before bed. And no, no, no, I do not mean go to bed later. I mean eat dinner earlier and then shut it down. You wanna go to bed without having just eaten. Because when you just eat and lie down, first of all mechanically, you can get some of your stomach acid washing up onto your esophagus, giving you heartburn. So that's a problem. But also when your stomach is full, ghrelin's suppressed. And this can also then suppress the release of growth hormones, which is growth hormone, should be released through the night. So big, big, big important thing is to stop eating three to four hours before bed. Because it's part of that first step into intermittent fasting is that ability to go and do a 12 hour overnight fast. So one of the most important things you can do for your health and for your weight is shutting it down after dinner. Now you're saying, I'm craving sweet and salty. And when I hear that, my little radar goes off of like, are you stressed? Because quite often you crave salt when you've got adrenal exhaustion going on. And that's why I think a little sea salt, not crappy table salt. Note high quality sea salt. We go, like, in the old days when we traveled, I would get sea salt from all sorts of cool places like the Dead Sea in Israel and Maui. Boy, those were the days, weren't they? But I still get really great sea salt. It's the splurge. And then I have a great salt grinder. So use salt, but use real salt because you're gonna get those minerals too. But I'd also go back and look, why am I craving sweet and salty now? Exposure equals preference. If I trained my body to think, oh, nighttime I get a little treat, a little something something, or it's because I'm stressed. And if it's because I'm stressed, you know, sleep is one of the most powerful antidotes and of course, hiit training to teach your body how to handle stress better. Tapping or meditation? Love my buddy Nick Ortner's Tapping Solution app and my girl Emily Fletcher's Ziva Meditation. So find what works for you there, because you're gonna get that craving of sweet and salty kind of as that little double whammy of I am stressed. And again, your adrenal gland cries out for salt, but you cry out for sugar too. Why? Well, when we're stressed out, we have unstable blood sugar and we also tend to lower our serotonin, which makes us crave what? More sweet. So when I hear that unique craving of sweet and salty, I think that let's look back and see if stress is to blame. And let's instead of having that sweet and salty treat that undermines your diet and health, let's instead look at what can we put in place of that as a replacement activity to help your body handle stress better. And ideally, you're replacing that activity and you're not able to pick up the sweet and salty. So maybe you are taking a great bath with some lavender and Epsom salts and reading a great escapism book while you're in the bath. Because you can't go get that sweet and salty thing if you're in the bathtub, right? And you know, or taking a nice walk, something else that helps you replace that activity and help to manage that stress. And here's the thing, the first couple days you're gonna go, yeah, this bath is not the same as a caramel fudge sundae with pretzels on top. It's just not. But over time, you will forget about it and you'll feel so much better. So let's start working on the stress. Let's replace that activity, and let's make a vow that you are going to stop eating three to four hours before bed. There you go. This is JJ with Ask the Health Expert. I do this five times a week, so make sure you never miss a show by going to subscribetojay.com. Foreign.
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