Ever wonder why you can resist snacks all day long, but then suddenly crave chips or ice cream at 9 p.m?

You know what? There's a reason for that, and it's not just a failure of willpower.

Your body's natural rhythms and brain chemistry, even your sleep habits, all play a role here. Today, we're going to take a look at the

science behind nighttime snack urges and what you can do about it. Welcome back to the Nutrition

Diva podcast, a show where we explore the science behind healthy

eating to help you make choices that work for your life. I'm your host, Monica Reinagle.

And today, we're tackling a challenge that many of us are all too familiar with. You make good

choices all day long, but then come evening, you just feel like you must have a salty,

crunchy snack or something sweet, and your self-control is nowhere to be found.

But science suggests that there's a lot more at play here than just a failure of willpower.

Our appetite actually follows a circadian rhythm fluctuating throughout the day and tending to peak in the evening. At the same time,

our metabolic and digestive processes have their own circadian rhythms. And when we eat at night, we are likely to store more of

those calories as fat than if we ate the same number of calories earlier in the day.

In other words, our urge to snack peaks right at the time of day that we can probably

least afford to. Now, I know this seems terribly

unfair, and perhaps even like a design flaw. But let's look at this in evolutionary terms.

As I said, our natural hunger levels tend to peak in the evening and are lowest in the morning,

and that's pretty much regardless of when we actually eat our meals.

And this might have been an advantage in early human history.

When you think about it, most hunting food gathering and other work required to ensure survival happened during the

daylight hours. Eating and digesting and resting may have largely been reserved for the

less productive evening hours, which would have been followed by an overnight fast that

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