Ever do really well all day with your food plan and then snack-eat all the calories you’d saved, and then some, the last few hours of the day?
That has to stop if you’re going to lose weight.
Here’s a plan for eliminating late night caloric excess.
1. Log food. Log food. Log food. When you get to your daily calorie limit, stop eating. Regardless of if it’s 1 PM or 11 PM.
2. Control the playing field. If you’re at home, be the decider about what snacks are available, and make them things you can control the intake of, or pre-portion them into single servings.
3. Eat. Don’t go hungry all day and try to hold it through the evening hours.
4. Don’t have a hard and fast rule that it’s bad to eat after dinner, or after 8, or any specific time. If you get really hungry at 10 pm, save your last meal’s worth of calories till 10 PM and eat then.
5. Don’t have a hard and fast rule that certain foods are evil and must be avoided at all cost. If you are not actually allergic or reactive to a particular food, you can have some if you have calories left for it. Quantity control is where it’s out.
6. Choose to have a little bit of a great food, instead of a whole lot of a non-satisfying food, for the same number of calories.
7. Change the subject. Change the scenery. When the kids bring out the freshly made cookies, I eat the smallest one, which tastes just like the whole plateful, go walk the dog, go water the flowers, whatever, and when you come back in, the cookies will be gone. No more temptation.
8. Don’t stash food. If something is immediately available without preparation, and it may call out to you to come eat it, only buy enough for today’s caloric needs.
9. Remove food from your house that you’re not going to be eating. Send the leftovers home with other people.
10. Don’t bring food in your house that you do not intend to eat yourself. Putting it in your shopping cart at the grocery is giving yourself pre-approval to eat it. If you have nerves of steel and can have a case of Twinkies in your house without eating half of it yourself, good for you. That’s not me. For me, availability is permissive. What I permit to be around me, makes it available for me to consume.
You CAN win over excessive consumption. A large percentage of our excessive consumption is mindlessly eaten snacks. Be real, be honest with yourself, and enjoy your actual meals while not allowing endless grazing.
