Night time is so bad for me. I cannot get myself to stop eating at night as that's when my will power is at it's lowest.
My motto is if you can't fight it, join it!
So my solution, crazy as it sounds, is I drink coffee all day, then diet coke to curb my appetite. Then I eat a tiny little dinner, then....I snack all night.
I'm a total watermelon junkie. And I can't go a day without a piece of dark chocolate, also strawberries drenched in white sugar. YUM!
So that's what I look forward to at night, getting all the goodies. The less I have during the day, the more I can have at night.
I know I'm not normal because I don't suffer much from light headed-ness, and REAL hunger. I guess I'm lucky that way.
Nightime is definitely when I have the least control over what I eat, so like you, I plan for it calorically. I don't eat breakfast and if I'm very hungry, I'll have something for under 100 calories. I do have coffee every morning and a glass of hot water with fresh lemon juice. I then eat a light lunch and some snacks. By dinner time, I will have had a total of about 800-900 calories so that gives me about 600 calories to play with. I think that you should do whatever works for you. Just make sure you're getting a well balanced diet...that's a lot more important than when you're eating. It comes down to calories and nutrition.
I'm the opposite. I prefer breakfast and lunch to dinner. If I eat well during the day (perhaps 500 cals for breakfast and 600 cals for lunch), I don't feel the need to overeat in the evening. If I don't eat much during the day I get cranky and overfocused on food.
Night are always my down fall. Once I start I can't seem to be able to stop eating. My solution is not to eat anything at all after supper. If I don't start I am able to control the snack demon that lurks within me.
You found something that works great for you, awesome!
I think we're always so preoccupied with what we're "supposed" to do—eat three meals a day, eat six small meals, etc.—that we forget to think outside the box and do what works for us.
I do something similar to you, but in the morning. I snack all morning (my breakfast and lunch are snack sized, so I guess they're not really meals), stop for a few hours, eat dinner and then usually stop for the rest of the day. If I don't have enough calories then I'll have a protein shake or something small in the evening.
I don't like eating late and I'd much rather be done eating by 5pm and start up again at 6am the following morning.
You can eat at any time of the day and lose. I think that nighttime eating is discouraged by a lot of diet sites cause they assume that you will eat Doritos or something after you've had all your meals. Me, I eat my real meals at night in general.
I have become very convinced that my very best eating pattern is fasting until 11:00 or noon, even, and then eating a decent brunch, working out, eating a snack post workout and a late dinner around 7:00-8:00 pm. This keeps me from overeating because I'm fasting most of the day and night, and when I do eat I am satisfied and have fuel right when my body demands it. It is incredibly comfortable and I don't get hungry like I worried I would, with skipping breakfast. It's nice
Do look into intermittent fasting if nighttime eating is what you struggle with. It might help your dietary adherence immensely to stack your meals in such a way that at at night isn't off plan but precisely what you should be doing! Then the rest if your day is set up to support that action, rather than the action undermining the rest of the day. Voila
Last edited by Arctic Mama; 04-02-2012 at 08:36 PM.
I try and have something to do with my hands at night. I embroider and knit and usually don't think about snacking. I used to be a big time night snacker.
I have to allow for a snack after dinner wether it be a small amount of dark chocolate with peppermint tea or pop chips with play no fat yogurt. I save points for my evening snack but I have to eat breakfast and lunch. I am famished when I wake up in the morning unless I binged the night before.
I love eating in the evenings and I enjoy larger portions rather than doling a tiny bit of food out for 6 small meals a day. So, I fast during the day, drinking water with lemon, green tea, a bit of coffee, sometimes a diet cola... then I have an 'eating window' in the evenings between about 4-9pm where I consume around 1400-1700 calories (the amount of calories that nets a loss for me at this weight).
Lots of people eat this way, or similarly -- we have a support thread in general diet plans and questions about intermittent fasting, you could come check it out and see if it sounds like what you do
My problem is that I eat too late. I get home late, so I just ate dinner half an hour ago, and I still have nearly 300 calories left to consume
I'm trying to eat more earlier in the day, but I worry about getting hungry late at night and sometimes I just don't have a chance to eat more while I'm working.
I am a night time eater as well. I do WW and get 37 points a day. I usually eat around 15 during the day, and the rest for dinner and evening snacks. It's just the way I've always been! It's never seemed to hinder my weight loss.
Oh man, I just broke my habit of eating at night. I would wake up at like 2am and eat something, sometimes even a full on meal. I try not to eat after 9pm nowadays because all I do is lay in bed once I'm done eating, so it's not good.
I gotta have a snack in the evening. Sometimes two. I eat my first small meal at 1pm. Second at 4pm. Dinner is the largest at 7pm. And then a bulky low cal snack at 10pm-ish (usually a fiber cereal and a little almond milk, sometimes with fruit, sometimes without). Sometimes extra fruit or veg if I am really hungry that day, or one larger meal in the afternoon instead of two smaller ones when we're out hiking for the day.
I am really glad that everybody can work a plan differently and there are lots of different ways that work! I would not survive a one size fits all eating plan!
Yup, I'm generally a nighttime eater too. I do eat a small breakfast (200 cals, same thing every day), small lunch (~300 cals) and sometimes a snack during the day, but I try to keep my daytime calories to 500-600. The rest all come after 8pm. Dinner is usually 300-400 calories, and the rest of my daily calories go to large or small snacks after 11pm. Usually reasonably healthy stuff with some nutritional value (greek yogurt, turkey jerky, popcorn, berries, a smoothie, etc.).
Does anyone else do this about nite time eating?
