I love daylight. It’s a time for doing, not for planning. For living, not for thinking.
Night time is when I’m alone with my thoughts and they aren’t always comfortable. When I’m not comfortable I reach out for comfort food. And that’s where the problem lies.
Therapy is expensive, Ben and Jerry’s isn’t.
All of these years I’ve been eating ‘comfort’ food but it hasn’t been adding to my peace of mind.
It’s just a temporary means of distracting myself from the boredom, sadness, anger or discomfort that I might be feeling at that time.
The sad truth is that I’ve no real reason to feel uncomfortable, unhappy or uneasy as I have a good standard of living.
Yet those feelings prevail and I still give into them a lot……
With comfort eating!
It’s not that everything will be better after a fucking Twix, but it seems that way before you start.
Then 1 Twix becomes 2 and you’re in a sugary daze Googling ‘how many miles do I have to run to burn off two fucking Twix’s?’
5 miles? I’m going to fucking bed! But not before another Twix! That will help!
You get the idea.
Night time is lonely for most people, even if they aren’t alone.
Here are 5 points to consider if you’re like me and tend to overeat or otherwise overindulge in the early hours.
- There’s nothing wrong with having a snack or a drink at night – Just don’t get to the point where you’re having to majorly adjust your diet tomorrow to compensate for all of the shit you ate today.
- Know your routine – If you’re like me and susceptible to eating more in the early hours, then plan for it and eat less when you aren’t that hungry at breakfast/lunch.
- Keep track of what you eat – You might get to the point where you’ve been logging your food and thinking ‘I’ve eaten 3,000 calories already and I’m going for another Mars Bar!?!”. Log it. And enjoy the Mars Bar as much as you can. Often the guilt of exceeding your ‘limits’ urges you on to eat more as you’re left feeling broken or empty.
- Don’t feel shame, but try to understand yourself and your weirdness – There have been mornings where I’ve woken up with empty wrappers on my bedside table and I can’t remember when or how the fuck I consumed that shit “Could it be that I was force-fed a Mars Ice Cream by a Poltergeist? Yes. That sounds plausible!”. Sometimes it’s easier to call the parapsychologist than the psychologist.
- Make tiny positive steps to getting better – I’ve been a crazy fucking fiend for Cheese for years now and it has probably offset the 700,000 calories I’ve burned through running quite substantially. Does this mean I should give up running? No. Does this mean I should give up cheese? No. But I can cut my intake and monitor it.