A common question I get:
“I always overeat in the evening or at the weekend. How can I stop this?”
Overeating in the evening and overeating at the weekend are complex issues and there are so many reasons they can happen. I’ll cover the most common reasons and solutions in this post, but if you want my undivided attention, book a free call here so we can find the best solution for YOU.
Let’s see the first reason for overeating in the evening or at the weekend.
Let me ask you a few questions first:
1. Do you eat enough during the day/week?
Do you restrict yourself during the day/week and use up all your willpower and motivation by the end of the day/week?
Maybe you don’t even realise but you don’t eat enough during the day because you’re:
– dieting, restricting food,
– eating too low-calorie foods (and not feeling satiated),
– don’t have time to eat,
– too stressed to eat.
Possible solutions to avoid overeating in the evening:
– Eat regular, balanced meals with enough protein, healthy fats, complex carbohydrates, and fibre in them.
Avoid quick-fix diets, “magic” weight loss pills and teas. See the reasons why you need to avoid quick-fix diets in this blog post and how yo-yo dieting affects you mentally and physically in this blog post. In this case study blog post, I compare Dieting Diana and Balanced Bianca (a.k.a. Food obsession and food freedom).
Restrictive dieting will make your emotional eating worse. In this 1-hour live class, I talked about 5 of the most common mistakes that dieters make that drive them to overeat and how to fix these issues. Change these and you are on your way to food freedom (a.k.a. eating the way you want to eat instead of how your cravings make you eat).
You can watch the recording of this class here.
– Make sure you eat enough during the day/week even if you are super busy.
Order healthy food if you don´t have time to cook or meal prep at the weekend so you have food during the week. Check out my Pinterest boards for inspiration.
– See how stress affects your eating habits
Learn about the things you don’t even realise cause you stress from this blog post.
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– Try to manage stress as much as possible by building emotional tolerance.
This is something we work on with my clients inside my 12-week 1 on 1 coaching package. Book a free call here if you want to learn more about this option. If you don’t want to commit to 12 weeks just yet, book a 90-minute coaching call here.
Let’s see the second reason for after-work or evening overeating answering the common question: “Why do I always overeat/binge eat after work/in the evening/at night/at the weekend?”.
2. Are you bored or lonely in the evening?
A common reason for overeating in the evening is that you try to fill a void in your life with food. You notice this void mostly in the evening and at the weekend when you are alone or you aren’t so busy anymore.
Potential reasons for feeling bored and overeating in the evening:
– not having anything to do in the evening or at weekends (using food as entertainment),
– having to do something you don’t want to do or are bored with (e.g. evening routine with the kids after a tiring day or still need to work in the evening) – using eating to procrastinate.
– being overstimulated (constantly checking social media, playing online games, watching videos, Netflix marathons, etc.) – consequently, nothing seems interesting anymore.
– living an unfulfilled life or living out of alignment with your values – makes you feel bored with your life.
Often we don’t even know what our values are, we just feel that something is off.
If you are not living in alignment with your core values, you create a disconnect between who you are on the inside and the life you are living on the outside.
This disconnect zaps your energy, makes you feel unfulfilled and bored with your life, and derails you from achieving your goals and dreams.
Download this free worksheet to identify your core values so you can start living in alignment with them and have a more fulfilling life.
If you feel like you’re living an unfulfilled life you may also need to find the real purpose of your life. This blog post can help you do that.
I wrote a detailed article about Emotional Eating to Escape boredom in Brainz Magazine. In that article, I also show solutions to resolve this issue.
3. Do you use food as a source of energy when what you actually need is rest?
Another common reason for overeating in the evening is having so much to do that you don’t have time to rest and you eat for energy.
Or maybe you stay up late for other reasons (fun, travelling, work shift) and eat to not fall asleep.
The thoughts driving these behaviours can be:
“Other people depend on me.”
“I just finish this one thing and then I go to bed.”
“Sleeping is a waste of time.”
“I just want to have fun and watch one more episode of …”
Remember:
You are human.
It’s ok to ask for help.
You’re allowed to rest for energy.
You need to sleep to stay healthy.
If you suffer from insomnia, why not try these self-hypnosis audios to say goodbye to sleepless nights?
4. Has it become a habit to overeat in the evening, after work, or in front of the TV even when you’re not hungry?
Do you go straight to the fridge when you get home from work or finished working at home? I’m definitely familiar with this one. I used to do it a lot until I became aware of this habit.
When you repeat this habit many times you build neural pathways connecting certain activities happening in the evening or at the weekend to eating.
The first step to stop the habit of overeating in the evening and at weekends is:
Identifying your habit.
Get clear about what you do as a habit.
No judgment, no worrying about whether it’s good or bad.
Just the facts.
For example:
• I snack in front of the TV.
• I eat when I procrastinate on something I don´t want to do.
• I eat when I´m bored.
• I eat while I cook.
• I go back for more until I’m stuffed.
• I eat leftovers while cleaning up the kitchen.
Don’t feel bad if you do any or all of these habits, they are just habits, and they don’t make you a good or bad person. I do/did some of them too.
One way to give up a negative but pleasurable habit is by replacing it with a positive, pleasurable habit.
When we give up a habit, our brain automatically starts to search for another activity that can provide the same or similar good feelings.
That’s why smokers put on a bit of weight when they stop smoking.
They find the missing pleasure in eating.
So, it is very important to choose the new habit wisely.
To find a good healthy habit to replace your unhelpful habit check out the 20 Simple Habits To Get Healthy and Fit free ebook.
In the Healthy Habits to Permanent Weight Loss course, you can learn in much more detail how to change these habit loops and how to build sustainable healthy habits.
See you there? 🙂 You can access the course here.
5. Binge eating or emotional eating is also related to some kind of restriction, not only in your diet but in other areas of your life too
If you regularly binge eat, you are likely a perfectionist. You want to do everything perfectly and you also want to look perfect.
This perfectionism is driven by a fear of being judged and criticised. Nobody likes to be judged or criticised.
So you make sure everything is done properly.
You agonise over the tiny details.
Getting most things done is stressful and it takes a long time. Even once it’s done you still feel anxious about it.
Because you do everything perfectly, you’re the go-to person at work, and you’re always pleasing everyone, you never disappoint.
At the same time, you’re dieting, and exercising to look perfect too.
You feel guilty when you are not productive or you take time for yourself.
You are afraid of enjoying your favourite foods because you might not be able to stop eating and you are anxious about gaining weight.
So you avoid these foods.
You deprive yourself of your favourite foods, rest and fun.
But I want you to know:
the more you restrict
the more you binge.
Binge eating is the breaking point when your body can´t take any more restrictions and the stress caused by this deprivation.
It finally needs some pleasure! And you let your guard down in the evening and at the weekend when nobody can see you leading to overeating in the evening and at the weekend.
This creates the self-fulfilling prophecy of not being able to stop eating and gaining weight.
The very thing you wanted to avoid. Crazy, right?
Restrictive dieting will make your emotional eating worse. In this 1-hour live class, I talked about 5 of the most common mistakes that dieters make that drive them to overeat and how to fix these issues. Change these and you are on your way to food freedom (a.k.a. eating the way you want to eat instead of how your cravings make you eat).
You can watch the recording of this class here.
The solution to overcome overeating in the evening and at weekends:
Stop restrictions and develop more sensible and sustainable (eating) habits.
In the Healthy Habits to Permanent Weight Loss course, I teach you how to build sustainable and pleasurable eating healthy habits.
6. Are your meals satisfying?
Do you feel satisfied after finishing your meals?
Maybe you just keep eating in the evening or at the weekend because you didn’t find the food you ate all day or all week satisfying.
You continue eating after fullness to seek pleasure or you binge on your favourite foods.
What can you do to overcome overeating in the evening and at the weekend?
– No matter how nutritious that food is, if you don´t like it you will want to eat more.
Try adding some texture (like crunch or creaminess) to see if that helps.
– Eat your favourite foods during the day/week too not only in the evening/at the weekend.
Eat them slowly and mindfully, and enjoy every bite (instead of mindlessly snacking on them).
– Is there enough protein/fat/fibre/carbohydrates in your meals?
Balanced meals make you feel more satisfied and satiated.
I used to eat very healthily and “clean”. Often didn’t feel satisfied after eating these “perfect” meals and I kept eating after feeling full.
Just adding some not-so-healthy but satisfying ingredients made a huge difference and I stopped overeating in the evening and at weekends.
These meals are still healthy but more balanced.
Also, adding protein to your meals helps you feel more satiated. Vegan proteins are completely fine too.
Check out these blog posts for recipe ideas.
High protein vegan recipes Pinterest Board
7. Do you use overeating in the evening to avoid negative feelings?
You constantly worry about not being good enough.
Perhaps you also struggle with self-confidence.
Even the most successful people sometimes feel like imposters. They worry that one day someone will realize they’re not really qualified for their job and they’ll be exposed.
This fear of being a fraud is called “imposter syndrome.”
You probably also fear being judged, criticised, or rejected. As a consequence, you often focus on what is wrong, and what isn’t good enough (in yourself or your work).
You want to control everything.
But that’s not possible, of course, and this creates a lot of negative thoughts, feelings, and stress.
You might feel anxious, sad, frustrated, angry, depressed and so on.
Food becomes a release and overeating in the evening or at night is inevitable
Food becomes a release from all that stress, overwhelm, and other difficult feelings as well as an escape from not feeling good enough.
And when do you have time to worry and think about all these issues? In the evening and at weekends, of course. When you’re alone with your thoughts and feelings leading to overeating.
Solution:
Find solutions for the real issues causing the negative feelings you’re suppressing or avoiding with eating.
While you eat you feel good, you don’t need to deal with these issues. But the problems remain there and you’ll still have to deal with them later, plus with the weight, you gained from overeating.
Use this free Food and Lifestyle Journal to figure out what is the real emotion behind your overeating habit.
Try this meditation when you feel like eating to suppress your negative emotions. It helps you sit with your feelings without eating and develop emotional resilience.
It’s important to get help to overcome overeating in the evening and at the weekend
While overeating in the evening and at the weekend is often viewed as nothing more than a food issue, if it were that simple then following a healthy eating plan would have fixed it by now.
You can see from this article that it can actually be much more complex than that. But the good news is that it can be resolved when you make the decision to deal with these issues.
If you’re struggling with binge eating, emotional eating or overeating in the evening or at weekends, it’s important to get help. In my book, I discuss this topic in more detail, and I offer tips and strategies for overcoming this problem.
If you’re ready to make a change, check out this free training about how to eliminate emotional- and binge eating from your life or simply book a free discovery call to talk about your specific issues. In my private coaching program, I provide highly individualized support for my clients to overcome their overeating habits.
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