The snack on my nightstand

Some nights dinner is enough and I am done. Other nights I finish eating and still feel a little hungry. The hunger is mild and I am not quite finished. For a long time my answer was willpower. Hunger at bedtime was a problem to solve by lying there and outlasting it.

I treated wanting food at night as a test. Going to sleep hungry meant I had passed. I never said that out loud, because it sounds strange, but that was the rule I lived under.

A snack within reach

These days I keep a small snack on the nightstand. If I feel hungry, I eat it. If I do not, the snack stays there until another night. That is the whole arrangement. It took me a long time to arrive at something this simple.

Choosing the food was easy. The harder part was dropping the idea that a bedtime bite meant I had failed at dinner. The old habit turned every after-dinner snack into a test of discipline. Changing that took much longer than putting the snack within reach. Some nights I still hear the old rule. I notice it and eat the snack anyway.

When I look at the old rule now, I cannot find the logic in it. I used to lie there hungry and call the discomfort discipline. Hunger at night usually meant I needed something to eat. I go to bed after the snack when I need it. The practical change was a small snack on the nightstand.