How Snacking At Night Prevents Weight Loss

EATING HEALTHY IN THE DAY CAN BE CANCELLED OUT BY POOR CHOICES AT NIGHT

Eating between leaving work or school and getting up the next day can account for more than 74% of a persons food intake. Making the wrong choices at this time can sabotage any attempt at weight loss.

Uncontrolled and mindless eating in the evening can be the downfall for many people. Many individuals do well doing the day because of the structure of work or going to school. Once they come home, it can be a free for all in the eating and snacking. Some people will eat foods at night they never thought about in the morning.

MINDLESS EATING DURING THE EVENING CANCELS OUT ALL GOOD EATING DURING THE DAY

A few hours of eating to do boredom, anxiety, depression or cravings from dinner to bedtime can make the whole attempt at weight loss almost impossible.

Eating what they are making and their children's food is often a problem for women.

Once dinner is over, homework is done and the children are put to sleep eating can even become more out of control. Almost all of this eating is out of habit, boredom, stress, depression or anxiety. Rarely is really due to hunger. Eating for these reasons may produce some temporary pleasure and calmness, but since the signal to eat was not hunger in the first place, often the feelings and the need for even more eating returns. People who eat too early and go to bed too late make this problem even worse for themselves. It leaves a lot of time to make some mindless mistakes. For other individuals it's about spousal "approval." When one spouse falls asleep before the other that leaves time to find the hidden cookies, cake or chips-- after all no one is looking...

CONTROL EVENING EATING ENSURES WEIGHT LOSS

One of the best ideas is to put a little structure into the evening and plan a snack mid evening.

Removing the "bad" food from the house is the first important step.

Large portions of carbs or alcohol encourages overeating in the evening.

Have a snack at 4-5 PM on the way home; this controls both hunger and hypoglycemia

Women that snack as they are cooking or cleaning the dishes gain weight.

Don't eat other people's food

A good way to gain weight is to eat dinner too early and then go to sleep late in the night. It leaves too much time for developing real hunger.

Make sure you are not eating too early or going to bed too late. Since it does not matter what time you have dinner, push the dinner meal a little later. For example, if you are eating at 6 PM and going to bed at 11:30 that leaves a long time for mistakes. Have a snack at 4-5 PM and eat dinner at 7 or 7:30 and then plan to go to sleep at 10:30. This reduces the time for mistakes from five hours to three hours.

Go to sleep earlier. Most people have little control late in the evening and make some potentially very serious mistakes. If you are trying to do work on a computer late at night, your work is probably not very efficient. It's easy to compensate the work with some bad snacks. Go to bed earlier, get up an hour earlier in the morning. You will do better work and not be faced with same bad foods at six in the morning that you might experience at 11 PM.

One of the secrets of evening eating is to plan ahead. Have a nice snacks midway between dinner and bedtime. Looking forward to a mid-evening treat will help you decrease some of the evening grazing. Having no plan is far worse. It's all about imposing the same structure you have doing the day on the evening.

Keeping tract of what you are eating with an empty paper plate next to your computer or TV helps many people see how much they are snacking.