Your Nervous System Is Eating the News

And it's showing up on your plate at 10pm.

I want to talk about something that has nothing to do with meal prep, macros, or what you had for lunch.

I want to talk about what you're consuming after dinner.

Not food... Information.

Because right now — between the Epstein files, political chaos, daily outrage cycles, and whatever algorithm-fed rabbit hole your phone served you last night — your nervous system is working overtime. And most people don't realize it's costing them.

Not just sleep. Not just mood.

It's costing them their follow-through with food. (Okay, I brought it back to food. I can't help myself. But stay with me.)

Here's What's Actually Happening to Your Nervous System

Your body doesn't know the difference between a real threat and a perceived one. It never has. Your stress response doesn't distinguish between a bear in the woods and a headline that makes your stomach drop at 9:47pm while you're lying in bed.

Both trigger the same cascade: cortisol rises, blood sugar shifts, your nervous system moves into a sympathetic (fight-or-flight) state. Your body starts looking for regulation — something to bring it back down.

And what's available at 10pm? What's in the kitchen? What requires zero effort and delivers instant comfort?

Food. Usually carbs. Usually something crunchy, salty, or sweet.

That's not a discipline failure. That's biology doing exactly what it was designed to do — find the fastest available source of regulation when the system feels unsafe.

The problem is, the threat isn't real. It's a screen. But your body doesn't know that.

The News Cycle Is Designed to Keep You Activated

This isn't a conspiracy take. It's a business model. Outrage drives engagement. Fear keeps you scrolling. Algorithms don't care about your cortisol — they care about your attention.

And if you're someone who prides yourself on being informed — on knowing what's going on, staying current, being engaged — this is especially hard to hear. Because it feels like the responsible thing to do. It feels like caring.

But there's a difference between being informed and being activated.

Being informed is reading the news at a set time, processing it, and moving on. Being activated is scrolling through political commentary for 90 minutes before bed while your heart rate quietly climbs and your jaw tightens without you noticing.

One serves your awareness. The other hijacks your nervous system.

What This Looks Like in Real Life

Here's a pattern I've seen — not just in clients, but in myself:

The day goes fine. You ate well. You trained or moved your body. You handled your responsibilities. You feel solid.

Then the evening hits. The kids are settled. The house is quiet. You finally sit down with your phone. And you start scrolling.

Thirty minutes in, you're reading something that makes you furious, or scared, or disgusted. Your breathing changes. Your shoulders creep up. You don't notice because it happens gradually.

And then — almost like clockwork — you're standing in the kitchen. Not hungry. Just... there. Reaching for whatever's easy.

The next morning, you wonder why you "didn't have willpower." You tell yourself you need to try harder. You might even skip breakfast to make up for it.

But willpower was never the problem. The input was.

Your Bandwidth Has a Ceiling

I write about this in Run Your Plate Like Your Run Your Life — this idea that you're not a robot. You have a finite amount of bandwidth each day. Stress, decision-making, caregiving, work, social interaction, emotional processing — they all pull from the same reserve.

And here's what most people miss: the drain isn't only happening at night.

Every time you check your phone between meetings and catch a headline that spikes your heart rate. Every time you scroll through political commentary on your lunch break instead of actually eating. Every time you watch a 45-second clip designed to make you furious and then try to refocus on your work — you just made a withdrawal from the same reservoir.

By the time the day slows down, your capacity for self-regulation is at its lowest. That's not a character flaw. That's how every human nervous system works. You've been spending bandwidth on stress inputs all day — and you may not have even noticed.

So if you then spend that last window of the day — the one between dinner and sleep — consuming more content that keeps your system activated, you are spending your final reserves on something that gives you nothing back. No rest. No recovery. No repair.

And then your body does what it does: it reaches for the fastest comfort it can find.

What I'd Actually Suggest

I'm not telling you to be uninformed. I'm not asking you to stop caring about the world. Caring is not the problem.

The delivery system is.

There's a difference between sitting down to read a well-reported article once a day and having cable news running in the background for six hours — the same three stories recycled every twenty minutes, each one engineered to trigger the same emotional spike. I've been in people's homes where the news is on all day like wallpaper. And you can feel it in the room. The tension. The reactivity. The low-grade agitation that everyone's marinating in without realizing it.

Video hits differently than text. It's faster, louder, and designed to bypass your thinking brain and go straight for your emotions. A 45-second clip with dramatic music and a tabloidy headline isn't informing you. It's activating you. And your nervous system doesn't know the difference.

So the question isn't "should I pay attention to what's happening in the world?" Of course you should. The question is: how are you taking it in, and what is it actually costing you?

Here's where I'd start:

Ask yourself an honest question. What does your wind-down actually look like — not what you want it to look like, but what it really is? What are you scrolling at 9pm? What are you watching in bed? How does your body feel when you finally put the phone down? If the answer is "activated" — tight chest, racing thoughts, clenched jaw, a general sense of dread or anger — then what happens next at the kitchen counter makes complete sense. It's not random. It's a response. And once you see the pattern, you can interrupt it. Not with more discipline. With a different input.

Change the format, not just the timing. If you're going to take in news, consider reading it instead of watching it. Text gives your brain room to process. Video is designed to provoke a reaction before you've even had a thought. And set a window for it — rather than letting it bleed into every spare moment of your day.

Protect the last hour. Swap the final 30–60 minutes of screen time for something that doesn't activate your stress response. A book. Music. A conversation that isn't about the state of the world. I'm not being prescriptive — I'm being physiological.

Move your body, even briefly. A five-minute walk after dinner. Some stretching. Nothing performative. Just enough to discharge some of the tension your body accumulated during the day.

Breathe with intention. Three deep breaths before you eat anything at night. Not to "be mindful" in some abstract way — but to shift your nervous system out of sympathetic mode so your body can actually digest what you give it. A 4-7-8 breathing cycle works. So does just slowing down long enough to notice what state you're in.

Eat something planned, not reactive. If you know nights are your vulnerable window, have something ready. A protein-based snack that doesn't require decision-making. Not because you're "being good" — because you're protecting your nervous system from one more unstructured choice at the worst possible time.

This is exactly why the S in SPARK doesn't just stand for sleep — it's about intentional silence and restorative rest. Your nervous system needs a protected window where nothing is being demanded of it. Not information. Not decisions. Not even "catching up." That's not laziness. That's maintenance.

This Isn't About Perfection. It's About Paying Attention.

Cravings aren't weakness. They're information. Your body is telling you something — about fuel, about recovery, about what's missing. When you learn to listen, the signal gets clear.

But you have to be honest about all the inputs. Not just what's on your plate. What's on your screen. What's in your ears. What your nervous system is marinating in while you think you're "just relaxing."

Because if your evening routine is an hour of doom-scrolling followed by a trip to the kitchen followed by guilt followed by a terrible night's sleep followed by skipping breakfast to "make up for it" — that's not a food problem. That's a nervous system problem wearing a food costume.

And the fix isn't a new meal plan. It's protecting the hours between dinner and sleep like they matter. Because they do. More than most people realize.

One More Thing

If you're someone who keeps "starting over" on Monday — who feels like you can't sustain anything — I want you to consider that the issue might not be your plan. It might be what's happening in the hours nobody talks about. The quiet hours. The scrolling hours. The ones where you're alone with your phone and the world feels heavy.

Start there. Not with more rules. With awareness.

That's the foundation everything else is built on.