Eating patterns · Late-Night Eating
Track late-night eating without another rule about what time to stop
Almost everyone who describes this describes it the same way: the day was fine, and then something took over between nine and midnight. It's treated as an evening problem, so the fixes are evening fixes — a cut-off time, a rule about the kitchen, going to bed earlier. They rarely hold, because the cause is usually eight hours upstream. Under-eating at breakfast and lunch, or a day with no real break in it, is a far better predictor of a heavy evening than anything that happens in the evening itself.
For people who eat well all day and lose the evening.
Why this is hard to keep track of
- The obvious fixes are evening rules, and the cause usually isn't in the evening
- By nine at night nobody is opening an app with a calorie field in it
- It gets under-recorded precisely because it's the part people feel worst about
- One good week proves nothing either way, and memory can't hold five
Worth recording
- What you ate and roughly what time
- What you had earlier — especially whether lunch actually happened
- {"What the evening was doing" => "alone, screen on, working late, wound up"}
- When you got to bed, and how the night before had gone
Cadence
A sentence at the time, or next morning if that's more realistic
In practice
Say it once, or photograph it
The entries most worth having are the ones made at the exact moment nobody wants to fill in a form. A sentence — typed, dictated, or replaced entirely by a photo of the plate — is a much lower bar, and it carries the context a calorie field would have thrown away.
Called 4 tools
log_meal(items: ["toast", "chocolate"], at: "23:05", setting: "sofa")log_context(screen: true, bedtime: "00:40")get_history(window: "1d", meals: true)compare_periods(metric: "late_eating", group_by: "lunch")
Every figure here was counted from entries you made. The model chose which tools to call — it doesn't score the meal, estimate calories from a photo, or decide what any of it says about you.
And then ask
The question the log can answer
Months of entries hold real answers to the things you've been guessing at, and reading them properly has always meant a spreadsheet and a free evening — which is exactly what nobody has.
Ask in plain language. The answers come back with the counts behind them, including when those counts are too thin to mean anything yet — which is the more useful answer far more often than people expect.
Called 3 tools
get_history(topic: "night-eating", window: "6m")find_pattern(group_by: "context")compare_periods(metric: "entries")
Counts and averages over your own entries, nothing more. Where the data is confounded or too thin, the answer says so instead of rounding it into a conclusion.
What it does
Set up around late-night eating
The same mechanics as everything else here, pointed at what actually matters for this one.
An entry is a sentence
Type it or say it. No item lookup, no portion field, nothing to complete before the entry counts — which is the whole reason this one survives past week three.
Or just a photo
A picture of the plate takes a second and records the thing descriptions are worst at. We store it against the entry; we don't estimate a calorie count from it and hand you the guess.
Context, not just food
Where you were, who with, what had just happened. In almost every log on this site the pattern turns out to live in the context rather than in what was eaten.
No streak to break
A gap in the record is a gap in the record. Nothing resets, nothing is lost, and nothing tells you that four missed days undid the month before them.
Readable across months
One rough fortnight reads as one rough fortnight when it sits on a six-month line — which is the view that changes what people believe about themselves, and the one a daily score can't draw.
Yours, and exportable
Everything you've written and every photo, out in one file whenever you want it — including the date range a dietitian or therapist asked you about.
The reason a lot of people start
Something to actually bring to the appointment
You get fifteen minutes, and the first question is always some version of "so what does a normal week look like?" — which nobody on earth can answer accurately from memory.
What this gives you: A picture of the whole day rather than the evening, which is what anyone competent will ask about first and what nobody can recall accurately.
- Export the date range you were asked about, as a file you can print
- Photos alongside the entries, which say more than any description
- Counts and timings rather than an impression of the worst week
- Nothing shared anywhere unless you choose to share it
What it won't do
- Score a meal, or sort food into good and bad
- Estimate calories from a photo and present the guess as a number
- Set you a calorie target, a macro target, or a weight
- Run a streak you can break, or tell you that you've fallen behind
- Comment on your body. The photos here are of food
- Diagnose anything, or suggest that a pattern is a diagnosis
It's a notebook that can do arithmetic and answer questions about itself. Deciding what any of it means is a job for you and the people advising you.
Early access
Start with what you're already trying to hold in your head
Tell us what you've been trying to keep track of and we'll set it up with you — recording the thing that's actually useful, at a cadence that survives a bad week.
- Founding accounts lock their price for life
- No card, no trial clock, no notification designed to make you feel behind
- Export everything you've logged, photos included, whenever you want
Also here
The rest of the picture
These overlap constantly, which is the point — the answer to a question about one of them is very often sitting in another one's data.
Mindful Eating
A sentence or a photo after a meal, whenever it's worth remembering
Emotional Eating
Afterwards, when you can. Same day is close enough
Binge Eating
Only when you want to. A gap in the record is not a failure
Mindless Snacking
Two seconds, at the time. Dictated is fine
Portion Sizes
A photo when it's a proper plate of food. Not every snack
Hunger & Fullness
Two numbers around a meal. Five seconds, once or twice a day
Sugar Cravings
When one shows up, whether or not you act on it
Eating Out
Afterwards, or the next morning. Never at the table
Intuitive Eating
Whenever you notice something. Some days that's nothing at all
Keep the record without it becoming another job
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