How to stop your late night eating?

 

Overview:

How to we stop the frustrating habit of late night eating?

First figure out:  why you keep doing it? Once we find the cause, we will know what to fix.

Is it a physical reason?

a) are you simply hungry?

b) do you eat a lot of addictive foods? (packaged, highly processed, fast food?)

c) do you lack nutrient dense foods?

Is it an emotional reason?

a) do you avoid you feelings? Do you fill the emotional emptiness with high caloric foods? (notice: even if you eat 2 million calories the problems you tried to solve are still there. You are just fatter)

b) do you have lot of brain errors? That means is your inner dialogue negative? Filled with stories that make you feel bad?

c) are you storing unprocessed emotions?

One of the most important question is:

What do I really feel?

What do I need? (in terms of emotions)

What can I do other than eating to feel that?

You  want to feel better than you feel now, so you seek pleasure, comfort, or relief

We seek pleasures, comfort and relief at night.

Are the pleasures you engage with “false pleasures”?

False pleasures betray us, creating long term negative consequences. Example:  overeating, drinking, excessive online shopping, gambling, social media overuse.

You know you overdo the false pleasures if you are fat, broke, and drunk. And the issues you wanted to fix, with the food, the drinks and the stuff, are still there.

Luckily there are also “wellbeing pleasures”  that create long term positive consequences – if you were to do it every day.

What wellbeing joy do you crave? A book, walk in nature, solitude, light yoga, bath, hot tea?  What is your thing?

To reiterate, set yourself up for success:

1) eat nutrient dense foods.

2) be aware of your emotions, process them

and something I haven’t mentioned until now:

3) LOVE YOURSELF. I list it as the last thing, but it might be as well the first thing.

Too many people beat themselves up for overeating. What if you overate one night and INSTEAD of feeling horrible, instead of feeling hopeless, defeated and sad, you started being kind to yourself, asking yourself kind curious questions with a lot of patience? That might very well be the last night you overate that much.