Help, I ALWAYS end up overeating past 5pm.

I don't keep junk around typically. I'm lucky in that I work until 6 and don't get dinner before 7, leaving me with less snacking time. I've trained myself to drink water when I've been tempted to snack in the past simply because hunger and thirst feel very similar. Keep yourself occupied with things that aren't food. Log out your day beforehand​ so you know where you shouldn't be straying. Vary the foods you're taking in to keep things from getting boring.

... There's plenty of ways to not gorge yourself with snacks but you gotta want to stick to it.

Well what type of food do you eat in the day and how much?

I had a similar problem, so I started making myself log BEFORE I ate anything after 3 pm.

I could successfully log after breakfast and lunch, but late afternoon​ and through the evening became a stumbling block for me.

To ease into it, I challenged myself to log what I was getting ready to eat before I ate it after 3:00 for just one week.

Interestingly, during that week, I found several trigger behaviors and rationalizing thought patterns that I then worked on in subsequent weeks to address.

After that week, it became easier for me to log in the afternoons and evenings because I was using logging as a way to monitor my progress on those triggers and thought patterns.

When I am done eating for the day even if not going to bed for a few hours I brush my teeth and use mouthwash. I am not sure why this works but it is a bit of you are done eating signal that helps me not eat late at night. It is an easy thing to try.

Stop classifying things you love as "junk" or "healthy".

Stay away from trans fats if you can, and obey a dietician's orders if you have a medical condition, but for weight loss and better future health, just eat what satisfies you within your calorie limit.

I lost all my weight in 12 months and have kept it off for over a year by eating what satisifies me within my calorie limit.

That meant/means leaving two thirds of my calories for dinner, alcohol and dessert after 5 pm.

I eat the bulk of my calories after 5 pm.

Maybe you need to adjust your day.

Some great tips. I like the brushing your teeth. I think I'll also go back to having diet jelly in cups in the fridge and also chewing gum on hand.

I have a habit of wanting to eat more in the evenings; I have quite a busy job so don't really have time to focus so much on food, but in the evenings when I finally get to relax I like to enjoy food as a part of that. Like others have said I make sure I keep my calories lower throughout the day so I have a decent amount left for the evening, and I also pre-plan everything (sometimes a week in advance). It's really helped

I kid you not, since I started eating more in smaller meals throughout the day, the binging after 5 has stopped! I also learned from a metabolic test that i burn calories 33% faster then what fitness apps calculations suggested. I went from a 1800 calories limit to 2000 and now I'm still losing weight and less hungry at night!

My problem is the time between getting home and having dinner. Once I've had dinner, I'm quite content with my cup of tea for the rest of the evening. But until then, I'll hunt through every nook and cranny in the kitchen for something edible. Part of it is hunger, part of it is simply habit.

I've sadly developed the habit: get in through the front door -> go to kitchen and grab something to eat. It doesn't matter if it's 3pm with another 3 hours to go till dinner or 7 pm and dinner will be on the table in 15-20 minutes. I still reach for something to munch on. The worst part is my train of thought: "I'll be eating in 15 minutes; this doesn't even taste good; dinner is that super yummy leftover from yesterday; why am I eating this?" I know what I am doing and that it's stupid. That realization alone hasn't helped me break that cycle yet. Not giving up though.

So, carrot sticks have become my friend. I prep a 1kg bag of carrots into sticks every Sunday afternoon. So when I come home, I can grab a couple of those to munch on. It seems to satisfy both the hunger (when present) and the habit until I have dinner sorted on the table.

Figuring out why I was overeating when I get home after work has helped me find tricks, if not to prevent it, at least to limit the damage. I suspect that given time, I'll either figure out how to break the habit completely or learn to accept it and just continue to deal with it.

lmew91 wrote: »

I can relate. Since I have entered maintenance, I've noticed that I still want to be really careful with how many calories I consume during the day (while at work.) So I space it out, and I'm not hungry really during the day, but my stomach starts to growl as I'm driving home.

By the time I get home, I'm prowling the kitchen and snacking on whatever I can grab. This usually results in something like Cheez- Its, and I scarf down a few handfuls, which then leads to the mindset of "oh well, too late, can't weigh them now, might as well not even try to estimate." Sometimes after this, I still eat the dinner I had planned, and the damage probably isn't too bad. Other times though, one little un-logged snack can easily lead to three before I've even had dinner.

For me, I've just had to accept the idea of eating more during the day, because I have more calories to eat since I'm now in maintenance, and I am also exercising more. Having snacks on hand that fit within my goals helps too, and the act of slowing down and weighing my snacks out before eating them helps me stop and think about what I want, is it worth it, and how much should I have?

For me... what seems to be working is single serve packs. I know that I'm going to want to crunch something while dinner is prepping, so I've got single serve packs of fruit snacks and goldfish(I know not super healthy) to munch if I'm feeling cravy or peckish

I like logging my whole day of meals first thing in the morning to see if I have any flex calories leftover for dessert.

Other ideas:
-log all of your overeating snacks. Sometimes seeing the numbers and going over goal is enough to curb the habit.
-not buying snacky foods that you're prone to overeating. I have a moratorium on keeping chips, pretzels, blocks of cheese, and frozen snacks in my house. The candy is hidden out of view so I only eat it when I know I have the cals to spare.
-perhaps you're not eating enough food for breakfast/lunch/snacks before dinner?

For me personally it helps to have 250-350 cal meals with a few snacks throughout the day. I'll typically have a mini Larabar in the morning around 10:30-11 am, a string cheese and carrots around 2:30-3:30pm , and either a laughing cow cheese wedge + 7 small crackers before I workout around 5:30pm or an 8oz glass of plant-based chocolate milk after I workout around 6:30pm before dinner at 7:30-8:30pm.

Go to bed at 5.01.
Problem solved.