109: Why can't I stop overeating at night? I'm worried about my weight

Speaker 1: 0:00

I still remember the meal plan she gave me that dietitian I saw when I was probably 19 years old. For breakfast, I would start with a black coffee, a small piece of toast with something like cottage cheese on it. Morning tea was a small apple. She even specified that it needed to be small. Lunch was a salad with protein and low-fat salad dressing. Afternoon I was allowed 100g of fat-free, no added sugar yoghurt. Well, I bet you can guess what happened as soon as I walked through the door. I get home after studying at university all day pumping myself up with sugar-free energy drinks and I'd rampage through my kitchen. I would cook up noodles and I would eat chocolate by the block. I would demolish ice cream Bread would just end to me and I couldn't stop eating. Now, this is a bit of an extreme example of when I was completely denying myself of food during the day, only to end up binge eating at night. I've had less extreme versions of this, though, where I've been on a healthy eating plan, doing what I thought was a little bit more balanced, and yet I'd still come home and the avalanche of eating would start and I'd eat more than I planned. Even if it wasn't binge eating, I was definitely eating more than I wanted to and I felt so incredibly helpless, like why can everyone else be in control of food? But I am not in control, and I really thought there was something wrong with me for a very long time. Well, turns out there was nothing wrong with me. The reason I couldn't stop overeating at night time wasn't an intrinsic fault or flaw. There was nothing wrong with my willpower. I was doing a whole bunch of things that were making it so hard for me to actually stop eating when I felt full.

Speaker 1: 2:02

Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of no Wellness Wankery. I am your host, lindy Cohen, a dietitian and nutritionist who's done far too many diets. In fact, it used to be a compulsive binge and emotional eater and now I can't remember the last time I felt out of control with food. I helped thousands and thousands of people feel normal around food, something you so deserve. This podcast is research and science backed, because that's what we need. We need to follow advice that is actually rooted in the evidence Instead of following all this silly diet advice. It just makes health eating way more complicated than it needs to be. In this podcast, you are going to hear from experts like myself, real stories from clients and people who are going through exactly what you're going through, and the aim is to help you feel relaxed and in control around food, something you so deserve.

Speaker 1: 3:01

Today's episode is for anyone who's ever wondered why can't I stop overeating at night, what is wrong with me? And if you are one of those people who you feel like you try so hard to be good during the day, only to end up binge eating or overeating at night, then you're in the right place, my friend. So, whether it's binging on something sweet after dinner or inhaling whatever food you can get your paws on after work, this is manageable and preventable if you address the causes of this behavior, and we're going to get into it in this podcast. By far the biggest mistake I see so many people making, so many clients making, is not eating enough during the day, and I know you're probably going to say to me I am eating enough. That's why I need help with nutrition. I can't stop eating, and I would say one of the biggest problems is that you're probably eating most of your food at nighttime, doing it in a way that feels really out of control, and this is how we're leading to that intense overeating as opposed to intentionally eating more during the day. So, remembering there's difference between impulsive eating and intentional eating, and what I need you to do is give yourself permission to eat more than you probably think you should during the day.

Speaker 1: 4:19

Like I told you in the beginning, I had these meal plans throughout my entire teens and twenties. That would tell me what I was and was not allowed to eat, and so it's really hard for me to forget what a perfect day on the plate looks like. I have all these ideas of what is acceptable, what is not acceptable, what is naughty, what is good, what is bad and, as a result, what I found I was doing is I was trying to stick to what I thought a healthy meal looked like. I'd finished the meal let's say it's lunchtime and I still had a little sweet craving. I was like, oh, I'm quite satisfied. But the willpower was still strong at that point and I would persevere and try to stick to my diet and be good, only to get into that inevitable overeating at night time.

Speaker 1: 5:00

Now, what I learned the hard way and through seeing thousands of clients, is that when we adjust what you eat during the day, making sure you're actually eating enough and, as I said, sometimes more than you think you're allowed to eat based on all those diet rules. What you're going to notice is more satisfaction, a reduction in cravings, and you might find that that overeating at night time becomes a thing of the past. Here's what I want you looking for. I want you to make sure those meals that you're eating are adequately balanced. You know the drill. We're looking for a complex carbohydrate, something that's high in fiber, something with protein and healthy fats, and each of these three components come together to help you create a meal that is truly satisfying. Then we want to add vegetables, or fruit or legumes because legumes, they do count towards our veggie intake as well and we're bulking out our meal by doing this, making sure that there's enough roughage for our gut to work at its best and making sure that there's actually enough food in our stomach that it presses against the stomach lining, which sends those message to our brain to say, ah, they're eaten, they're full, that's cool, we can chill now.

Speaker 1: 6:12

Firstly, if you are one of those people who are trying to save calories for later in the day, it is such a recipe for overeating when you get too hungry or when you start feeling a little bit tired or stressed, and you know what Life is very stressful. If you were a robot and you lived in a controlled environment and you didn't have to deal with the dramas of life, I'm pretty sure you could stick to a meal plan. But the reason those have failed are because you are a human with a complex life. So stop wishing that. Oh, you know, I'll be able to stick to the diet when life calms down. When I finish this project, when my kids go back to school, we always say this I will finally be able to stick to it when all these beautiful things come into alignment. But that's just not the way it works.

Speaker 1: 7:00

Instead, building those balance pills with those you know that healthy fat, with the protein, with the carbohydrates, and eating more than you probably think you should during the day and experiment with this and you're going to see that, oh, maybe it does make a big difference. Now you might be going okay, but what should I eat? Now it's hard for me on a podcast to tell you what you should be eating, because if you were seeing me one on one or in something like my Binge Free Academy, I'd be able to help you and we'll talk about all those different ideas of things that you could be having, but generally, you know, it could be a sandwich with tuna and some chopped cherry tomatoes on the side. Now, that can be a really simple, few-ingredient kind of meal. It could be some scrambled eggs that you're having on a slice of toast. It could be maybe something that you had from dinner last night. It could be a pasta.

Speaker 1: 7:49

I know us dieters we're really fear pasta, but I tell you what I sat down to have a pasta the other day. It's a broccoli mac and cheese. The recipe is on my website if you want to grab it. It's also inside my Back to Basics app and I finished eating that meal, which is so easy to pull together, and I felt so satisfied. You know what? The creaminess of the cheese, something I was told to avoid when I was a dieter. That is what made me feel satisfied. The pasta made me feel full and the broccoli added to the bulk of what I was eating. There was some cottage cheese added in there and that was adding in that protein. So it was an awesome, balanced meal, something my dieting past would have gone on or. You definitely can't eat that. That's way too much. But I ate to satisfaction and you know what? I ended up having a really light dinner because I actually just wasn't that hungry.

Speaker 1: 8:43

Number two the second most common mistake, or something I see people falling into the trap of, is using food to self soothe at night. Something I found very useful is to remind myself of this. Food is not joy, food is not sleep, food is not rest, food is not connection. Food is not going to offer you all the things that you need. It's not self care, it's just food. And due to all these diets that we have tried, we have loaded all this emotional baggage onto food. And perhaps you were a kid who was raised by parents who used food as a reward. If you're a good girl, I'll give you a lollipop, or you're given a lollipop by going to the doctor and getting your vaccination, a reward for your good behavior, or food was taken away from you. If you're a bad girl, I'm not gonna let you eat or you're not gonna be able to have dinner. All the kinds of things that we were taught growing up, or perhaps it was. You have to finish everything on your plate, almost using food as a punishment. And all of this behavior, all these learned experiences from growing up really do help to reinforce that.

Speaker 1: 9:46

Food is something that can be used for emotional soothing. Now I have to say it is true, food is very good at emotionally regulating for a little bit, it does a whole raft of things that make us feel good. That is why we so often celebrate with food. You think about a birthday cake or party food, or even if we're grieving, you're at a wake, there's food, there's like a connector between all of us, and so some degree of emotional eating is normal and healthy. In fact, eating food is just one of the many coping strategies you have up your sleeve.

Speaker 1: 10:22

The issue is when emotional eating becomes your go-to self soothing strategy, as it had become for me. I looked forward to coming home because I knew I had my binge waiting for me, that food. It didn't really seem to judge me and I knew I could just escape life for that brief little moment while I was eating whatever it was. I go through the drive-through get McDonald's, get whatever I wanted, and just for that brief period of time it's like I could suspend reality, escapism and its ultimate, and I was so using food to self-soothe. Now, over the years, I've become so much better at recognizing what I'm actually feeling and then reminding myself of the fact that food is not joy, it's not sleep, it's not rest, it's not connection, it's just food. And perhaps you could try that for yourself. Next time you feel that urge to eat emotionally, you can remind yourself food is not these things, even if you end up emotionally eating. So you're coming home, you're going oh, I've had a really tough day, I just wanna eat something.

Speaker 1: 11:23

Simply becoming aware of the fact that you are emotional eating is a huge improvement. You can go oh, I've had a hard day, this is emotional eating. Try not to judge that feeling. Just sit with it, go, okay, I know what I'm doing. The awareness can make such a difference already a huge improvement. Then the next step you could go okay, well, I am still gonna do a bit of emotional eating. But what else can I also add into this to help me self-soothe? So you might go all right, well, I'm gonna have some chocolate, and then I'm also gonna see if I can get to bed a little bit earlier, because what I really need is rest. Or I'm gonna text my friends and just tell them I had a really tough day. So we think about this as habit stacking habit stacking for your emotional eating Then the next step is going okay. Now, maybe we don't always need the emotional eating. Once you've strengthened your ability to use some of these other self-soothing skills, you might find that actually the emotional eating isn't as important. Now, if you're doing this in conjunction with creating a healthier relationship with food, you are going to get the best results.

Speaker 1: 12:27

Number three another huge mistake is not recognizing that your diet rules are controlling you. Now, if you are like me and you have tried countless diets whether it's the Akins or Keto or Macros or the cabbage soup diet, weight Watchers, noom, jenny Craig I mean, I can go on, I can go on. Do you want me to go on? Are you probably nodding your head, going, okay, I've done some of these as well. Well, if you aren't that person, every single time you have gone on one of those diets, it's like you've picked up a handful of sand and you've popped it into your brain and each diet you're adding in another handful of sand. Now, each granule of sand is another diet rule and it's filling your brain.

Speaker 1: 13:13

And right now, if you've been dieting for years a decade, maybe decades can you imagine how many conflicting diet rules are probably existing in your brain, making it so incredibly hard for you to simply make a food choice. You know, you look at a menu. You go oh my goodness, there are so many options. Which is the healthiest, which is the best? Oh, that's got too high in sugar and fat and carbs and it feels like you're not allowed to eat anything. The problem with these diet rules is we think that they are the solution, but they are really the problem. If you feel like you have to make up for overeating or binge eating episodes the next day, then that is also another diet rule. If you feel like you need to reduce your portion sizes to be good, even mindful eating can be some kind of form of diet rule thinking I've got to be good today. I'm not allowed this many carbohydrates. I can't eat after 6 pm oh my goodness. The list goes on and on. Some people have hundreds, perhaps even thousands of these diet rules that have all come together to make healthy eating so much harder. So a really important step we need to do is identify which other diet rules that control you the most and start to pull them out of your brain, making healthy eating so much easier.

Speaker 1: 14:23

If you have not read my book. Your Weight is Not the Problem. I talk about this in depth. I give you very tangible tips on how you can start to unpick those diet rules, focusing on the ones that are going to make the biggest impact, the biggest improvement in your life immediately. You can get your Weight is Not the Problem from any online retailer at the moment where books are sold, and also some really good bookshops, and it is such a good place to start Now. I recently came across some interesting research from UNSW which showed how tired it is. So maybe that's you people who have lots of diet rules.

Speaker 1: 15:01

You're not actually able to adjust how much you eat according to your hunger and fullness Someone who is what I call unicorn, who has never dieted before. If they eat more than I before, they might wake up the next day and go I'm not actually that hungry. I might change what I'm eating today to account for it. Or they wake up really hungry and they might eat more. If you're a dieter, that is a foreign concept, because, once again, we have that meal plan playing in our minds that we cannot forget what we should be eating and we try to stick to it and, as a result of these diet rules, these meal plans, the idea of what we should be eating, actually means that we don't do that kind of compensatory natural behavior that non-dieters do. That is so important, that is so healthy and another reason why removing these diet rules will actually make intuitive eating so much easier.

Speaker 1: 15:50

A lot of people were saying to me I've tried intuitive eating. It's so hard, I can't do it. Well, we do have to also stop dieting at the same time. These two ideas have to coexist. You can't just do one without the other. You can't just use intuitive eating as a means to try and lose weight, because you're probably gonna end up overeating more. And the stake number four is not seeking help or trying to go it alone.

Speaker 1: 16:16

Now, situations like this, when you are overeating at night or you're binge eating at night, if you go on being untreated or you just go, I'm just going to white knuckle it and try even harder. What tends to happen is it gets worse and worse over time, and that's due to the compensation that you're doing. The next day, you're going, lying in bed, going oh no, I can't believe I messed up yet again. I'm going to start again tomorrow or I'm going to start again on Monday. You wake up and you go right, we're going to be good. You typically under eat, like that meal plan I told you about in the beginning, or you just eat, you think you're eating enough, but you're still not, and then we are getting into that inevitable overeating pattern again. You can see the pattern once you're aware of it.

Speaker 1: 16:58

I think it's incredibly helpful that, as I said, there are so many little bits and bobs that we want to be tackling in order to get on top of this overeating, on top of this emotional eating and on top of this binge eating, all of which are three different things requiring slightly different strategies for each. So please do not try and go it alone. Do not rely on your Instagram feed to give you ideas on how to manage your wellbeing, which, according to recent research, is where most people are now getting their health advice, which scares me, and there's yet another reason why I am actually sharing a lot of advice on Instagram at nude underscore nutritionist. Now, if you are ready to go, you know I don't want to be the person who comes home and just falls into the pantry and that doom and guilt and shame that follows. If you're sick of that cycle, you can actually do something about it.

Speaker 1: 17:47

I have my free five day course for emotional and binge eating. If this is you and you're going yes, this is me I think I would benefit then I'll leave a link in the description Go ahead and you can do that five day course. It's totally free. I'm giving you lots of tips. I'm giving you some really nice like visuals and ideas on what you can do to make a difference in your overeating this week. So if you go ahead and you do that, you're going to notice a big shift very quickly. And, of course, if you are looking for that one on one support, you're going.

Speaker 1: 18:15

I actually need a professional, and not just professional, someone who's also walked in my shoes before I get it. I am that person and I would love to help you inside my binge free Academy. Binge free Academy is the only place where you can get that group live coaching with me, where I can answer your questions, help you fix this, help you recover from what might be years and years of dieting. Now, sadly, recovery and learning how to feel more in control and relax around food isn't a quick fix. I'm the first to admit that. But that's why, when you do binge free Academy. I'm there holding your hand. That's why you have lifetime access to the course content. Because it's tricky. I know the common mistakes and traps and I'm there to help you avoid them.

Speaker 1: 19:02

Now I hope you found today's episode useful. If you liked this podcast, I would be so grateful if you left a review for it. Honestly, sometimes I feel like I'm just sitting here in my study talking to no one, and knowing that you are out there really is motivating for me to go. I should keep doing this. I should keep providing this free content for you, hopefully making a difference in your eating. So please go ahead and leave a review and help motivate me. I'd be so grateful. And if you have a friend, a mother, a sister, a grandmother, anyone who you think would benefit from no Wellness Wankery podcast, please do forward on this podcast to them. It would make such a big difference. Anyway, thank you so much for listening to today's episode. I'll see you next time.