ARGGG... I try so hard all day long to eat right. But I have this Habit of munching late at night.. even a half hour before bed time. Not anything big.. mostly I crave pickles this late at night. (strange craving, I know) I try to keep my snack habit to healthy foods. A apple, some frozen grapes. But often I slip.

It's a bit strange. as soon as night rolls around I get almost jittery from wanting to get up and root around in the kitchen for something to much on. I've caught myself half a dozen time after starting my diet again, wanting to head into the kitchen. I've tried chewing gum, sucking on ice cubes and brushing my teeth to kill the want to munch.

But nothing is really working. before my diet I think about 500 of my calories came from this night time snacking. Now I have it down to about 200-300. I am a night owl.. I tend to stay awake till 1 in the morning. Dinner is about 5 or 6 in the afternoon so I kinda get hungry in the 6 hours before bed.
Should I push back my dinner to later hours?.. say 7 or 8?
what should I do to keep from throwing my daily calories off with the extra 200 from the munching?..It's just so Grrrr.. makes me want to pull out my hair.

It's like all I think about at night is food and what is easy to grab and munch on. most times I'm not even hungry..

Have you thought of splitting your dinner into two? You will then have something substantial to eat later when you get peckish?

I would say do something in the early evening, some sort of class (exercise perhaps) or go out, then when you get some after that, have your meal.

I would try and push your dinner later on in the evening - I fall over if I don't eat for 3 hours, so no wonder you're getting nibbly! Perhaps have a snack when you get home at 6ish, then occupy yourself with something and have dinner later on. Don't believe all this "no eating after 8" stuff - weight loss/gain is all about calories. If people don't eat after 8 and lose weight, it's because they're eating fewer calories overall. I'm sure I could still put on weight if I ate just before 8pm... In fact I DO!

So good luck and try and spread your food out over the day. You might want to try eating 6 smaller meals rather than 3 squares. Just make sure your calories end up the same

Oh and about your HABIT - it really is just that. Try and break it by finding something else to occupy your mind with, other than food. How about learning saxophone or taking up crafts or scrapbooking or anything that will keep you out of the kitchen?

I, too, have a snack habit in the evening. The best thing that works for me, so far, is to have a lunch-type meal between 8-9. For example: tuna mixed with onion, red pepper, zucchini and some goat cheese, flavoured with some fat-free salad dressing, and stuffed into half a pita, with some fruit on the side. The catch is to have the stuff ready to put together, so I grab that instead of something else.

Everybody has given good advice and I tend to agree.

Since you know you are going to do it anyway, plan ahead . . . do a little bit of everything that has been suggested . . .

. . . make your dinner a little later . . . find an interesting evening hobby . . . save some calories for your 'bed lunch'.

Nobody is perfect and nobody has the perfect answer to your weight-loss journey. You just have to do the best you can and find a way that works for you. Good Luck.

I find that the only reason I get peckish later at night is because I am bored and food is always my comfort. I get online (God help me if my Internet Provider is slow) and try to keep myself occupied. You might try also to go to bed earlier. When I eat shortly before I go to bed, I seem to be more hungry when I wake up and end up having too much for breakfast. If I don't eat before bed, I have a better chance of making it through the next day without any problems.

I don't know if I could really go without that evening snack. I allow for those calories in my day. My favorite is low fat kettle popcorn. I prefer something sweet at night. I can sit there and munch and you get alot for the little amount of calories it provides. I also like graham crackers, pudding, and fishy crackers.

I look at my evening snack as a treat. I allow for it so it doesn't make me feel guilty. I try to make my diet fit into my life and not the other way around.

Lately I've gone bad and have been having a small amount of chocolate instead, but it's almost gone from the house now, so that shouldn't be a problem after today.

Me too! Me too! Now I try to eat dinner around 7 pm ish and allow a snack at 8 or so... a fat free fudgesicle (50 cals), a sugar free popsicle or two (20 cals each), occasionally one of those 100 calorie cookie snack packs - can't do those a lot, they make my blood sugar 10 points higher... bleh... I just try to keep it under a hundred calories if I want something sweet

Also, my husband has an odd schedule... He eats "breakfast" at noon, "lunch" at 5 or 6 pm, and has "dinner" when he gets home from school at 10 pm... and he's still losing weight, nearly 20 pounds in the last two months. So, the gals are correct, eating late isn't necessarily a problem.

Good luck!

-Lala

I would just push my dinner back.. "they" say the ideal day is:

Breakfast
Snack
Lunch
Snack
Dinner

Also dont believe the hype about "your metabolism slows after 6,7,8 oclock" Like your body says.. "whoops is 8 time to slow down" If you are up till 1am then your "8pm" is more like "10pm". Like someone else mentioned.. all that matters at the end of the day is calories in v/s calories out.

Everyone has given great advice so far. I have an evening munchie habit that I think is primarily boredom-induced. The best ways (for me) to combat it are to spread my food consumption out throughout the day (add in a couple of healthy snacks between my meals), push my dinnertime a little later, and find interesting things to do in the evening. I try to limit TV watching because I found, for me personally, that's the most dangerous thing. So now, I do things like read, exercise, write in my blog, and work on crafts, and I find that fights the munchies a little better.

Thanks for all the help and ideas everyone ^_^.. I have to admit that my habit does come from being bored. I'm on the computer mostly at night (chatting with my fiance) and if there is nothing good in tv or I don't have a good book or site to look at to keep me entertained, I'm often off to the kitchen to find something to do. Sadly that often means eat.
I am a bit of a artist and I'm trying to pick up my drawing hobby. Perhaps having something like that to fiddle around with will help me during the slow nights. ^_^

Maybe you could eat your lunch and dinner a bit later (an hour or so) and see how that goes. I get the munchies really bad between 2pm and 5pm (and sometimes after dinner) so lately I've been saving my morning snack for that time so I can have two snacks in the hours between lunch and dinner. This seems to be helping a lot and I don't get the munchies after dinner as much.