Overeating is extremely annoying, especially when you’ve everything else under control. You know the overeating type where you’re good during the day, you may even workout but the night time is your downfall? Well that’s what I want to address today.
You can really de-rail any results with overeating at night time. It only takes an extra 500 calories per day to gain one pound of fat in a week, and if you think about it, 500 calories is only a couple of bags of crisps and a chocolate bar.
When you’re working out and eating healthy, but reaching for the biscuit tin at night time, it may seem unfair but it can really stop any sort of physical results to show. Your clothes won’t get looser, and you’ll most likely start to get really frustrated.
To lose weight, and to fit better in your clothes, you’ve got to create a deficit. More calories out (burned) than in (consumed). But no amount of salad eating or workouts will undo the damage of a couch binge. I have tried by the way, and it’s the reason I stayed three stone overweight after Emily was born. I worked out, ate well but once 7:30pm came, that was ‘my time’ to ‘relax’ and ‘indulge’. ‘My time’ doesn’t have to be stuffing your face though like I did. So here’s my tips that have helped me, and I’ve tried and tested them all and they work:
- Workout every week. Workouts, even though they don’t seem it sometime, will give you a greater success at eventually cracking the food side of things. So try not to connect the two in a negative way. Workout for your health, and eat well to lose weight. If you continue to workout, there’s a higher chance you’ll eventually come over from the dark side and start to take care of your health better from a nutrition point of view.
- Eat your dinner and then work at cracking the habit of not eating after dinner. That is to not substitute. You don’t need anything after your dinner, a piece of fruit if you really need to but better to beat the habit of eating after dinner than to swop your unhealthy snacks for healthy snacks. If you just swop, you’ll never have the habit cracked and will always be stuck with the problem.
- Acknowledge you have a problem. This is probably the most important thing you can do. Don’t dress it up as anything other than overeating at night time. The sooner you’re honest with yourself, the sooner you can start to fix it. I promise you that you can’t lose weight and eat junk food at the same time, no matter how good you are during the day.
- Have your dinner, brush your teeth, close the kitchen door and snuggle in your living room with a good Netflix series for the night. Don’t entertain any other choice. Myself and Joe do this together. We’re good together in the sense that we both want to be healthy during the week. Yes, we slip up sometimes of course, but it’s so much easier when there isn’t someone beside you eating! And it’s not like you’re roping them into your ‘diet’, you’re promoting a healthy household, and asking people you love to do the same.
- Treat yourself at the weekend with what you fancy. Giving up all food that’s not good for you doesn’t work. Enjoy what you love on the evenings of the weekend.
- Fall in love with being healthy and keep working at that. You won’t be perfect, but just continue to do your best and love the feeling of being healthy.
Jessica Cooke X
