This is really something that is quite obvious. However, it seems as though every single person I run into who is trying to lose weight and perhaps also dieting makes this mistake.
Put simply, stop eating before you go to bed! There are so many excuses that people tend to give, but the most common seems to be that they did not have time to eat earlier in the day and so, when they get home, they are starving. As a result, they eat way too much and then go to sleep shortly thereafter.
It almost does not matter what else you did during the day or in the morning for exercise when you ate 1200 calories 2 hours before you went to bed. What you should be doing is eating a larger meal in the morning, medium meal in the afternoon or for lunch, and a small meal for dinner.
The easiest way to prevent yourself from gorging when you get home is to have small snacks (healthy snacks) during the day. If you’re always on your feet, bring a small granola bar or two and eat them in-between the busiest parts of the day. You only need a minute or so to eat one of those and this will help to keep you from gorging later in the day. If you were not able to snack during the day or to have smaller healthier meals and are starving when you get home, then the first thing you should do is to drink a huge glass of water. Do this and wait 15 minutes or so before eating. This will help to fill your stomach with something that is not calorie-rich and it will lessen your appetite so that when you eat, you won’t eat as much.
Also, if you can, you should try to exercise in the evening after your last (large) meal. This will help to burn-off some of the calories from that meal and will put you in a good position to lose weight.
Note that this is just a basic outline of eating habits, centered on when you eat. You can also change your diet so that you are eating healthier food and you can exercise more. However, as previously mentioned, it almost doesn’t matter how healthy you eat and if you exercise or not if you are eating lots of food at the end of the day, especially if that’s right before you go to bed.
