Ep #38: Overeating at Night

You are listening to the Weight Loss for Successful Women podcast with Shannan Christiansen, episode number 38.

Welcome to Weight Loss for Successful Women, a podcast for women who are ready to break the diet cycle and end their struggle with weight for good. Here’s your host, Fortune 100 executive and Certified Life Coach, Shannan Christiansen.

Hello loves. Welcome back to the show. So excited to be back with you today. Today, we’re going to talk about eating at night. I did this for so long. What I think the cause of it is and how we can change it. But before we get into the show, I want to give a listener shout-out to Parry Jenkins.

She wrote, “Shannan is amazing. I love listener to her. She really has sound advice. The weekend went good with her advice. Thank you, Shannan.” Thank you so much, Parry. It means a lot to me that you love this and that you’re listening. And thank you to all the ladies who’ve taken the time to leave a review. I really appreciate it.

So loves, I have not seen my dad in almost three months. And you know, we’ve done a lot of FaceTime but I have not seen him in person. We talked last Friday and he got choked up because he missed me. I missed him terribly too.

He really wanted to go out to dinner, and Arizona, well, we’ve opened up. So we ventured out to a restaurant. We picked up my two granddaughters and off we went. It was great to see my dad. We had a good time. But honestly loves, it was a strange experience for sure.

Everyone had masks and gloves on. Tables were disassembled to create social distancing. What a difference from three months ago? When we got home, we talked about how strange it was. I felt a little uncomfortable. My initial thoughts were, “I don’t want to do that again.” It amazed me that I still wanted to run from uncomfortableness.

I still did not want to feel the negative emotion. I think this shows up for us over and over again. We want to run from negative emotion. I want you to stop right now and just think about how many things have you stopped doing or never started because you did not want to feel negative emotion?

Loves, this leads me right into overeating at night. Overeating at night was a real trigger for me. This was one of the hardest things for me to stop. I remember I would start planning while I was at work to overeat at night. If I did not have something sweet to eat, I would make sure I stopped at the grocery store or swig a cookie shop on my way home from work.

I knew that I would want it at night. I knew that I was going to overeat at night. So loves, I’m going to talk about the top five reasons I believe we do it. So number one, we’ve had a lot of emotion during the day and we’ve pushed it down.

We feel stressed, uncomfortable, rushed, overworked, overwhelmed throughout the day, and we just push that emotion down. We put on our smiley face. And then when we get home, we just start overeating. We eat the sugar cookies or the pizza or the chips or even trail mix until we’re stuffed.

Number two, we think we’ve been good all day and we deserve it. We tell ourselves we ate a salad for lunch, we did not snack, so we deserve a treat. Number three, we’re tired. We’re exhausted. Our defenses are down. Being tired makes us think we’re hungry. And when we’re tired, oh loves, it is just such a trigger to overeat.

Number four, we’re lonely or bored and we’re watching TV, so we’ve created a nightly snacking routine. You ladies know what I’m talking about. We don’t want to feel the emotion, so we get our “treat” of ice cream or chips and we do this every single night.

Number five, we do not have any pleasure or joy, so we use food to fill that void. We’ve not created a life that we love. We don’t have fun and joy and pleasure every day. We are running around working, running family errands, running our kinds around, and so we use food as joy. We have equated food to joy. But food, love, is just a false pleasure. It doesn’t bring us true joy or pleasure.

These are all the reasons why we overeat at night. They have become habits for most of us. I did this so much that I did not have to think about it. It was just my nightly binge. I know that so many of my ladies in the Transform Society struggle with this too, and they’re learning ways to change their habits.

One of the strategies that I teach is how to feel emotion and allow it without pushing it down during the day when you’re feeling the negative emotion. Allow the emotion to be there, love. And then write down all the thoughts that are causing it.

Now, I know your lizard brain, Lizzie, will tell you that it’s too hard. How am I supposed to write down thoughts and feel emotions? But loves, coming back to your thinking back, your conscious brain during the day will help you process emotion so you’re less likely to want to binge at night.

Another strategy to help you stop overeating at night is to rest and have joy and pleasure throughout your week. Loves, we have run around like robots for so long, not resting, not have any fun during the week. But loves, there is a different way.

We can ensure we’re getting enough sleep. We can plan fun and joy throughout our week. Loves, don’t just save it for the weekends. And loves, creating new habits at night is key. Recognizing that you are overeating and that eating ice cream every night, it’s just a habit and you can decide to do something different.

If you’re watching TV every night, try playing a game, taking a walk, calling a friend. There are so many other things to do and try. I know my ladies in The Society, they do things in their accountability groups so that they can come up with ideas and strategies to help them.

Overeating is just a habit. And being conscious of it and trying new things can help you stop overeating at night. Loves, you deserve a body that feels like freedom and a life that you love. When you have thoughts that I deserve it, just replace with I deserve more than a cookie. I deserve every goal and dream I want. So good.

So, the transformational questions are, number one, why are you overeating at night? Ask yourself why. Number two, why do you want to stop overeating at night? Why is it important for you? Number three, what strategies could you try so you can stay on your realistic plan? So good, loves. Bye for now, loves.

If you love this work and want to go deeper, take my free course. You can learn more about it at bflycoaching.com/free-course. Bye for now, loves.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Weight Loss for Successful Women. If you love what you heard today and want to learn more, come over to bflycoaching.com. That’s B – F – L – Y coaching dot com. See you next week!