Can you go all day, sticking to your diet and exercise plan, but when the sun goes down you head for the frig?
Do you want to lose weight but you just can’t stop binge eating at night?
Do you find that your attitude towards your weight loss plan “suddenly” changes at night? Are you continually telling yourself “I’ll start over tomorrow morning”?
I’ve found that the time that I am most vulnerable to eating when I’m not hungry, emotional eating, and/or binge eating is at night.
UPDATE 2017: Note the date on this post (5/3/2007). I wrote it over 10 years ago. I’m happy to say I’m not struggling with night eating today and am able to eat food only when physically hungry. Imagine being able to do THAT, right? What would that do for you? Are you getting this? How amazing that would be?
How did I do this? I addressed what is 92.8% of the challenge for all binge eaters, emotional eaters, and night eaters. What IS the biggest problem? Your Mindset. The Good News is that once you get a weight loss mindset then the 7.2% of the puzzle (that’s the healthy eating and exercise piece)… the 7.2% becomes super easy for you, once you have a weight loss mindset. Grab my Free 5-Day E-course to learn start learning more now!
During the day I can be just fine, cruising along with a positive attitude, however after the bulk of the day is done, I have the urge to eat. Even though I am intently focused on my weight loss goals during the day, I can end up sabotaging my best efforts if I give into the thinking “a little won’t hurt”, or “I deserve it” at night.
5 Tips to Avoid Night Eating and Sabotaging Your Diet
Here are 5 tips to avoid night eating that you could implement immediately:
1. Exercise. – Have you ever noticed how many recommendations there are for starting out your day with a work out? I have never taken to this myself, and even when I could fit it in my schedule to exercise in the morning I have purposely avoided it to “save” my workout for the evening. This greatly helps me to avoid nighttime emotional eating, which could lead into a binge.
Exercise gets my mind off of food and focused back on to the goals that I wish to achieve. The increased oxygen to my brain energizes me, and I benefit from the endorphins released during exercise.
After I am done exercising, I no longer even want to eat (unless I’m physically hungry, of course). If I am hungry, I go for my healthy food choices rather than the food that will sabotage my weight loss efforts because I almost always feel more motivated and focused on my goals after working out.
2. Journaling. – If I don’t have time to exercise, or I do still want to eat for reasons other than hunger after working out, I reach for my journal and start writing. I write down what is bothering me, the reason I want to eat, and any solutions that I can come up with for the problems I am having that are driving me towards food.
The food isn’t going to solve my problems anyway, so what will? For the most part, I don’t even need to go that far before I have talked myself out of emotional eating. The simple act of pinpointing what is bothering me is usually all that I need.
3. Relaxation. – I have often experienced going all day at work, sticking to my eating plan, and then at night “blowing it” because I’ve been stressed all day. I have used food as a way to relax.
Instead of abusing food in an attempt to relax, I can turn my attention towards activities that will not sabotage my weight loss. This brings me back to point #1, exercise, and I also use relaxation/visualization CDs.
What works for you to relax? Gardening? Playing with your kids or pets? Talking on the phone with a friend? I even find cooking relaxing, and surprisingly, it doesn’t cause me to obsess about food. I actually find a great deal of inspiration in cooking healthy dishes with whole ingredients.
4. Banish boredom. – I’ve found that boredom is a red flag for me because I tend to want to eat when I am bored. If you have a stimulating job that keeps you busy all day and then you come home and eat because you are bored, it can help to get involved in something that interests you.
Watching TV doesn’t usually fit in this category (especially with all of the junk food commercials), but if you have a specific show that you absolutely love, then it could work. You could pick up a book, or start a home-improvement project. If you cannot think of anything that appeals to you, then perhaps you need to work on discovering what does.
Look inside yourself and discover what you can do that will get you involved and excited at night if you are eating out of boredom. Get out your journal and start writing about it. Think back to when you were a child, what interested you? Can you turn that into a stimulating hobby?
5. Go to bed. – When all else fails and you still want to eat when you aren’t hungry, go to bed. It helps if you are tired 😉 , however if you are not, you could put on a relaxation CD and perhaps you will end up falling asleep anyway (I do this sometimes, although it’s better to stay conscious if it’s a visualization CD).
This is the simplest solution but the one that I fight the hardest. I want to stay up and push myself to get as much accomplished in the day as possible, however I can end up sabotaging myself by doing so. For me, being overly tired is yet another reason that I want to reach for food. Have you ever found yourself doing the same?
I hope that my experiences can help you to avoid night eating and keep you on track to your goal. Out of all of these solutions, I would have to rank exercise as the #1, most helpful tactic for keeping me on track in the evenings.
If you have other tactics that have worked for you and helped you avoid night eating, please leave a comment and share them!
Who Else Wants to Stop Night Eating and/or Nighttime Binge Eating?
In my proprietary, proven system The Inner Self Diet, I’ve had numerous coaching clients who struggled with binge eating before working with me. These are my proven steps I’ve been coaching my awesome clients through since 2009 (2 years after this post you’ve read was written).
What’s so interesting is that even the toughest cases resolved while working with me. Many had tried therapy before too.
What would it do for you if you could stop struggling with your night eating?
What if your out-of-control behaviors after the sun goes down could be healed?
What if you could stop the binge at night? What if you could put your food and weight struggles behind you for good?
If you’re serious about ending the struggle then click here for your first step. And remember…. what exactly is going to change if you don’t make a change? And no, I’m not talking about making a change “some day”. After all…. that elusive “some day” never quite comes….does it. Click here to get started towards freedom from the struggle (It’s free but it’s a limited time offer. No guarantee you’ll get in if you wait.)
I find night time eating to be a challenge because for some reason food really tastes better before I go to bed, I’m not sure why.
Also because I can’t sleep as well on an empty stomach although if I eat earlier sometimes I am still full enough to sleep.
When I must eat something, I limit it to a few bites instead of a full serving. It’s another mind thing, before I even start I remind myself that I am eating only enough to put something in my stomach, not as a meal.
Of course the good taste thing doesn’t help, but I try to savour it, chew well and often it is enough.
The habit of eating at night is a whole different thing, thank you for your tips. I am going to try exercising at night although I am usually a little tired and the kids are home making it a bit more difficult, I can see the value in it. Maybe even a little mini booster work out will be of benefit.
Hi Jan,
Thank you very much for your comment, you’ve given me a very good think over “for some reason food really tastes better before I go to bed, I’m not sure why.” I am wondering if you are stressed out after a long day and the food is your “way of relaxing”? I could be totally off base, feel free to leave a follow up comment if you like.
I may end up writing a post about this after I have more time to think about it (if so it will be this week or next). Obviously you are aware of exactly what you are doing though, which is the first step if you wish to change the behavior.
Exercising truly does help me tremendously. It has helped me change the habit of night eating by taking my focus off of food, and after I’m done (usually on the treadmill), I not only feel great but I’m also not very hungry. It is important to eat after working out (once I’m hungry again), but I time my workout so that I end up eating at least 2 hours before bed. After I eat I’m normally satisfied for the rest of the night.
Yes, a very good comment, thank you!
All the best,
JoLynn
Hi, thanks for your comment!
I understand completely, relating relaxation to eating and comfort food. I would still do it if it didn’t cause me to gain weight, lose energy, and feel bad! 😉
Yes, when all else fails, going to bed does the trick. I’ve also combined that with bribing myself, saying that if I still crave such and such when I get up in the morning then I can have it. It always worked out that I didn’t want it anymore when I woke up the next morning, and now that I’m not eating sugar, I don’t have those cravings to begin with. 🙂
Hi JoLynn,
I thought your comments about night eating are brilliant! I’m always looking for ways to find a bit more success with my dieting, and I think this will help.
Something that I think about a lot – and I would appreciate your thoughts on – is whether other people, like me, have tried then quit several diets – I have some success but then I can’t keep the diet up for some reason, and I quit.
Is that your experience?
Anthony
Hi Anthony,
Thank you very much for your comments, you’ve asked an excellent question.
You’re not alone in your experience; there are millions of people who diet and quit–that is why the weight loss industry is a billion $ business (repeat customers!).
I used to diet years ago, and I decided to stop dieting all together because whenever I did I became obsessed with food. Then, I got fed up with my weight, tried another diet, became even more obsessed (one time I went to the store and bought a whole pumpkin pie to eat!), and said “forget it!”. I ate whatever I wanted, worked out on my treadmill religiously, and maintained my (over)weight.
In 2004 I did start a different kind of eating program (this is what I follow now) that isn’t a diet, but is about learning lifestyle changes. I believe in it 100% and am working on a post about it. I still believe though, that no matter how great a program is, there are many other factors (i.e.: the mind/body connection, food addiction) that can still keep you from success, so they all must be addressed. I also believe that one of the issues that I have had is a fear of success, which is something else I will be writing about.
I think the main point is that dieting really doesn’t work; there has to be lifestyle changes that you can make and commit to long term in order to keep off the weight that you lose.
So, the short answer to your question is “yes”, and I gave you the longer version. 😀 I hope this helps!
Great tips. Eating late at night can definitely hinder weight loss. Some people leave off carbs during their last meal since they are the major component of weight gain as a result of late-night eating.
@bdfwl,
Thanks, these tips have helped me with my own issues of avoiding late-night eating.
Here’s a tip I read years ago that helps me: brush your teeth right after dinner. You probably won’t want to put yourself through that again, so it helps curb eating. Be sure and floss; this is good for your teeth, and more trouble you’ll want to avoid by overeating.
S.
Hi Susan,
Yes, that can certainly help. I’ve even been going deeper over the past few months to heal my emotional eating issues because I learned that my night eating was emotional eating. You can learn more about it in my 12 week series, and the program I used is Shrink Yourself.
However if brushing your teeth takes care of it for ya and you’re not an emotional eater then you wouldn’t need that program. 🙂