Look at the Big Picture

Hi everyone! It's Karen here and I am excited to discuss nighttime eating with you this week. This is something a lot of people struggle with, but often go about addressing in an unproductive way. As with many problems, it is easy to think about solving it "in-the-moment." To illustrate my point....let's say you have a routine where you take your toddler to the grocery store right before their nap time. You think of all the things you can do to help your tired, cranky toddler get through the trip without a meltdown. Sometimes your plan works, sometimes it doesn't. You often leave the store feeling frustrated and overwhelmed. But have you stopped to think that maybe the solution lies in changing how you structure your day, so you don't have to put you or your toddler in the situation to begin with? Nighttime eating is a lot like that.

I've seen many clients try to manage nighttime eating using "in-the-moment" solutions, such as snacking on "healthy" foods, distracting themselves from eating, using portion control strategies, and even just going bed so they don't have to deal with it. While all of these are reasonable things to try, and can certainly be effective, they miss the bigger picture. We don't step back to look at the problem from a wider perspective. Kind of like the toddler/grocery store analogy. We just focus on fighting the current fire without thinking about how we might prevent that fire in the first place.

Assessing and changing our eating habits requires us to look at the big picture. For example, skipping breakfast might make you more likely to munch at night (we'll talk about many ofter examples in class this week). In our busy lifestyles, we don't stop to think about the interconnectedness of our behaviors over time. We have a very microscopic view of what is happening. So I encourage you to widen the lens though which you are viewing the problem, and you might be surprised at how many new solutions you see!