Can Eating Too Late at Night Lead to Obesity and Depression?

People eat late at night for a variety of reasons.
For some people, the reasons are practical like missing dinner time or needing a light snack to stay awake.
For others, it is all about desire.
There is a wide spectrum of late night eating, from completely healthy to dangerous to your health and life.
Most of us have heard the mantra, "No eating after 7 p.
m.
", but this isn't necessarily true.
People say this to curb late night snacking, but not all of this snacking is bad.
What really matters is the amount of calories you intake each day.
So if you've had a busy day and barely eaten anything, go ahead and have something healthy after 7 p.
m.
to round out your day.
Unfortunately, most late night eating isn't the hungry kind.
Some people mistake it for hunger, but if they would stop and think, "Am I actually hungry?" they would discover that they are not.
When this occurs, it is usually a craving that is the driving force behind the eating.
This is unfortunate, because in this mode people tend to eat things that are salty or full or sugar or carbohydrates.
This is when it starts to negatively affect your health.
Certain age groups tend to make a habit out of this, particularly in college.
There are lots of reasons for this.
One of them is just that they are following the crowd.
College towns are the only places I know of where every fast food place is packed at 2 a.
m.
Another reason young people tend to eat a lot late at night is the package syndrome.
This is when you sit down to study, read or watch television with a bag of chips or a box of cookies.
You mindlessly eat while performing the primary task, and before you know it you've eaten the entire package.
This can occur any time during the day of course, but it is more prevalent at night.
Late night eating takes an ugly turn when it becomes a disorder.
People, who suffer from Night Eating Syndrome, or NES, often also have symptoms of depression and suffer from obesity.
NES is classified as a sleep disorder, because sometimes people eat in their sleep and have no recollection of it in the morning.
Sleeping pills such as Ambien have been known to cause this form of night eating.
So, it is important to get your late night eating under control, so that you can experience a restful sleep not a fitful, binge-eating one.