Binge eating can be a problem for many people. Especially when dieting. In this article, I’m going to give you practical tips on how to stop binge eating at night (and in general).
Firstly, what qualifies as binge eating? Binge eating is where you frequently consume unusually large amounts of food and feel like you can’t stop eating.
As humans, we’re hardwired to want to eat more. Historically humans have had to eat large amounts of food to survive.
Because earlier in human evolution food wasn’t always as abundant as it is now. For example, it wasn’t uncommon for humans to get fat in the summer to help stave off starvation in the winter.
So naturally, we’re wired to eat more. And today it’s easier to overeat than ever before.
Corporations fill foods with just the right amount of sugar, salt and fat to make your taste buds tingle.
And this encourages overeating. Especially on foods like crisps, chocolate and sugary sodas.
But that’s not to say that you can’t binge on other foods. If you eat lots of “clean foods”.
That are also high in calories like peanut butter, fruit juices and dried fruit and eat a lot of them.
You can quite easily go over your calories. And get fat eating “clean foods”.
The Most Fattening Days Of The Week
Take a guess at which days are the most fattening. I think you already know this. It’s at the weekends.
This is how it usually goes.
It’s Friday night and people flee to the local takeout to order their favourite dishes.
Saturday comes round and they eat out again and have a few alcoholic drinks.
Sunday comes round and to end a tasty weekend they decide to do some baking and make some high-calorie tasty foods.
The result of this overeating on the weekend means that if you take the week as a whole you’re probably in a calorie surplus over the course of the week. This means that you eat more calories than you burn. And it’s the primary reason for fat gain.
The Problem With Eating Out
When you eat out. The meals you eat are made to be as tasty as possible and this often times means putting tons of extra calories on the food from butter and oils.
So if you eat out you need to expect the worst and come to grips with the fact that there is probably a lot more calories in your food than you first thought.
And most people eat out on the weekend and if every weekend you go way over your calories (on the weekend) while eating clean during the week.
The net result will be that you gain a ton of fat over time.
You see most people eat pretty decent for most of the time (Monday through to Friday). But when Friday, Saturday and Sunday come round they tend to eat way more calories than they need.
If this happens most weekends you’ll realise all of a sudden that you’ve gotten fatter even though you’ve ate “clean” for most of the week.
When You’re Surrounded By Lots Of Tasty Foods It’s Hard Not To Binge
Your Environment plays a massive part in you binging or not. For example. If you’ve got tons of chocolate bars, sweets, crisps etc in your house it will be much easier to overeat on those foods.
So make sure that you don’t have lots of foods that encourage overeating in your house. And if you’re going to go out to eat. Give yourself a buffer of calories to eat so that you don’t go over your calories.
For example, If I know that I’m going to have a big meal of 1000-2000 calories I’ll either eat nothing (by using intermittent fasting) or have a small meal a few hours before my main meal.
Because if you always go into your meal having already consumed lots of calories you’ll get fat quick.
Try And Stick To An Eating Routine
This way you’ll ensure that you don’t go way over your calories and you’ll be eating similar foods each day and you probably won’t feel like binging because you’ll have a routine in place.
If 80-90% of your diet is coming from good nutritious whole foods then its actually going to be quite hard to binge. Because Not many people like to binge on salad, veggies, lean meats, grains, potatoes etc.
These foods are just way to filling to binge on.
If You Have A Cheat Meal Go High Carb, High Protein, Low Fat
Protein and carbohydrates are rarely converted into fat. Whereas fat is the most easily converted into body fat. So if you do intend on having a cheat day try and keep your fats between 50-100 grams at the most.
Otherwise, you’ll gain fat really quick. Also, high-fat foods are much easier to overeat on than say lean meats, potatoes, veggies and oats. So in general just include no more dietary fat than you need when you overeat. And allowing yourself to eat lots of protein and carbs will leave you feeling full quickly.
Beef Up Your Portion Sizes So That You Don’t Feel Like Binging In The First Place
You should know that its not the calories that your body craves. It’s more about the volume of food that your body eats that matters.
For example, you could eat a chocolate bar or a massive salad with a lean protein source like chicken breast.
Which one do you think will be more filling?
If you guessed the salad you’d be correct. Because there’s much more volume with that type of food compared to a chocolate bar.
So if you tend to get hungry then beef up your portion sizes. Add more lettuce to your burgers and add less cheese etc. You get the point.
The Bottom Line On How To Stop Binge Eating At Night
- Save up a large number of calories for the night. So that when you feel like binging. You already have that calorie buffer. So you won’t overeat while eating lots of food. This will still help you reach your goals.
- Beef up your portion sizes in general. Add more veggies to your meals. Add more salad to your burgers and less cheese. Go for lower-calorie vs higher calorie options so you can eat more total food. This is called volume eating. Low-calorie jellies are amazing for this.
- Make sure that you don’t completely abstain from your favourite junk foods (but minimize them). Because this will make you want to eat “junk foods” even more. Remember there’s no such thing as a “bad food” but there is such a thing as a bad diet. So make sure most of your diet is coming from healthy whole foods.
Thanks for reading. If you have any questions about this article or on anything send me an email at contact@henrypaget.com and I’ll get back to you asap.
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