Dinner and Beyond: The Final Frontier

Is night-time your downfall? Are you a model diet follower during the day, but when the sun goes down you morph into an out-of-control diet werewolf, as it were? I must admit to having some of this trait myself. I really don't have much trouble being a good girl all day long, but there's something about that dinner table that melts my resolve.

Maybe it's the whole "family comfort" element that does it. Dinner time, in my house, is about the whole family coming together to share their day and share a meal. There are all sorts of feel-good emotions tied up in that meal that simply aren't connected to breakfast or lunch. And when you feel good, you want to celebrate: maybe another small spoonful of casserole or half a roll; it's really a shame to throw away the tiny portion of leftover pasta of meatloaf, so I'll just eat it up as I'm clearing the table.

Wait! Stop! It's this type of thinking that gets us in trouble. It's foolish to believe that if you ingest those extra calories at dinner (or after dinner), they won't count toward your daily total. And because you're eating them at the end of the day, they'll probably show up on the scale the next morning--then how will you feel? Believe me, I know how tempting it is--still is--to be the "clean-up gal" at dinner. But even if no one sees you do it, you're still eating those calories, and your body knows it.

So how to break the night-time overeating habit? Be just as mindful--if not more so--of what you're putting into your mouth at night as you are the rest of the day. Think about the hard work of sticking to your eating plan and exercising. Do you want to throw all that away for another mouthful of lasagna or a few extra bites of garlic bread? NOT WORTH IT!

The same goes for snacking before bed, when you might be tempted to have something sweet or crunchy. It's the winding-down time of the day, so it's natural for the mind to wander to snacking, even if you're not truly hungry. If your kitchen is downstairs and your bedroom is upstairs, try going upstairs right after cleaning up from dinner so you're not tempted to go back in for a bite or two. It's not as tempting if you have to go downstairs and back up again for that snack!

At dinner, perhaps the trick is not to serve foods you can't resist. Or to keep the garbage can next to the dinner table so you can empty the food scraps directly into the trash. Maybe you need a full-length mirror next to your seat. Use whatever behavior-modification methods you need to stop this bad habit in its tracks. You'll be glad you did.