Hello and welcome back to the podcast! I’m so happy to have you here with me today. I want to know, do you find yourself raiding the kitchen late at night, even if you’ve had a full day of eating? Not because you haven’t eaten all day and you’re starving and raiding the kitchen, but because you’ve had your regular meals and yet you’re still raiding the kitchen late at night? Today, I want to explore some common thoughts behind this, and maybe we can flip the script and stop. This is really important to talk about because I find, especially, the busier and more stressful our lives are – which is most working men out there – we’re busy, and then we come home, and then we want to relax. And sometimes, our brain has problems shutting off, and sometimes, our brain knows that if we eat food, it will shut off, right? So, we have these thoughts about working, about a long day, about what relaxing looks like, about what time for myself looks like, and a lot of times, if we’ve added food to that mix ever, that dopamine hit that our brain has gotten from the food is so intimately tied in with the joy we get from relaxing or taking a little bit of time to ourselves that it gets really hard to separate those. So, we have this idea after a long day: I deserve this, I need this, right? This is where sort of the “I need a glass of wine after work” comes from, right? Our brain has been stressed. We need a break. We have the thought, “I need a break.” We’ve at some point put food or alcohol in that timeframe, in that break. Our brain got a huge dopamine hit, and now it’s tied the two things together. So, taking a break after a stressful day of work begins to mean, I need a drink, I need a snack, I need chocolate, I need whatever. When the thought, the best thought really was, I just need a little bit of a break. When we intimately tie these things together, I need a break to take on a new thought, this, I deserve this, is my only time to enjoy this, I need this. So, we started with a pretty reasonable thought: I need a break or I’d like some time to myself. I want to relax. We tied it to food or alcohol. Our brain is not going to tell us whatever it needs to, to recreate that experience because not only do we get a little break, but we got that big dopamine release, so I hope that makes sense. We started with a very reasonable thought. It had nothing to do with food or alcohol. We started with the, I’d like a little bit of a break or I’d like to relax. I need some time to decompress from my day. Then, no fault of our own. We tied that relax time, that break time, with food or alcohol. That food or alcohol jolted our brain with feel-good chemicals of dopamine, and we liked that. Our brain really liked that. Not only did we get like a double whammy, good time, now they’re the same thing in our brain. They’re the same thing. And because our brain liked that feeling of dopamine and relaxing, whenever we have stress, we want to recreate that. And then it starts to become about the food, not the relaxing, right? So, our initial: I need to relax that takes on more of a food-dominant thought. I need a glass of wine to relax. I need a piece of chocolate to relax. I want to eat dinner longer because it’s the only time people are leaving me alone. I want this experience to last longer. And we tend to overeat, overdrink, overshop, whatever it is, whatever we linked that relaxation, whatever dopamine hit we’ve linked in with that. So, how do we undo this? With all these things that I try and explain, I really think understanding of how we got here, why it’s totally normal that we got here, is like 90% of the battle, right? Is reading, 90% or reading learning is the biggest part of 90% of it is just understanding how we got here we got here because we needed a break. We added food or alcohol with it. The dopamine has now totally warped the thought I need the food or alcohol, so how can we we know we know how we got here so what are some easy steps we can use to unwrap them from each other the first thing we have to interrupt the association so we know that we have this pairing of relax and food we have to become aware in the moment so it’s one thing to listen to me on your drive to work or drive home from work or whenever you’re listening. Oh yeah, that makes sense it’s another when you’re actually in the mist of like eating and drinking that’s when I want you like your little lightbulb to go off and be like oh my gosh it’s happening happening right now I can see it I can feel it using food as a reward because I had stress. We interrupt the pattern by recognizing it first then we figure out just anyway to disrupt the pattern that has been set so for example if it’s I put the kids to bed I go out I turn the TV on I get myself a glass of wine. We can interrupt this pattern anywhere along the line right we can ask her partner to put the kids to bed and we can leave so we can interrupt the bed. We can interrupt bed to go to the couch to watch TV. Maybe we go to our room and read a book. Maybe we go for a walk. Maybe we clean the kitchen. Anything interrupt the pattern of put them to bed, I go to the couch. Let’s say we get to bed, we go to the couch. Now we can interrupt the "I get up to get a glass of wine." Right? So if it’s something like my glass of wine and let it breathe while I put the kids to bed, don’t make the glass of wine before you put them to bed. Turn the lights off at the bar, okay? If I get something chocolatey, maybe we hide the chocolate from ourselves. If it’s I go grab a bag of chips, maybe we don’t have the chips in the house. For not saying these foods are good or saying we need to disrupt the pattern. So maybe for a little while while we’re working on a new pattern, we just don’t have chips snaps. We put them. We ask our partner to put them somewhere we can’t find them. We have to find somewhere along the series of events to interrupt the pattern. It’s going to be hard to do this because patterns are hard. It takes a lot of mental energy to make a new pattern when we make new habits. These things were asking our brain to do something that’s not automated already, so it takes energy. So we’re gonna have ourselves set a reminder on our phone. We need to tell everyone involved I want to change this. This is what I’m doing. I wanna change the pattern. Please help. Our phone sticky notes telling other people all very useful things just interrupt the pattern. Otherwise, we’re just gonna be sort of a mindless. This is what I do think about if you had to interrupt your morning process of like brushing your teeth, most of us think about how much energy it would take to interrupt that pattern. So that circumstances a little bit we change where the food is. We change the bed. We just change it ourselves reminders. Leave an alarm on our phone interrupt the pattern really try and be mindful when we are eating. So let’s say we did our best to interrupt the pattern and we get all the way like we’re on the couch with the chips. I would much rather you turn the TV off, sit there with your chips, and be super mindful and eating your chips. What does it taste like? What does it sound like when I’m eating it? Where is it? Where do I taste on my tongue? Is it crunchy? Is it salty? Is it sweet? Taste the same to the next? I would rather you sort of gazillion tedious like super tedious, mindful eating of the chips, then sort of zoned out I’m not paying attention. So if you catch yourself mid food alcohol from this previous pattern, okay, I didn’t interrupt it before, but I can’t interrupt it now. I can stop and put this all away or I can remove all the distractions and at least be mindful about it. I know that this is just a pattern I’m trying to break. We’re not gonna beat ourselves up if we don’t get it right every single time. Perfection is not a thing that humans are capable of ourselves research studies to make a new habit to make a new pattern. We do not need to be perfect. We just need to be consistent. We need to have some commitment towards it so we need to plan for these obstacles. We need to plan we need to have ideas of what to do. If no matter where we catch ourselves in the routine we catch ourselves before that’s great. We catch ourselves during that’s fine too ourselves after we can still be mindful like oh, I was gonna try and interrupt that pattern I missed it today, I know that I’m thinking about it now that I’m mindful. How could I have done it? We can try a whole new routine. I think the first step is just interrupting the routine we have if your nighttime routine is always over eat at some point before you go to bed, like really identify what am I doing? What’s happening here? Am I always doing it the same way? How can I interrupt the routine then we can create a nighttime routine like we interrupt this pattern. It won’t take as long as you think to interrupt the pattern and stop it creating a new pattern might take a little bit longer, but we can interrupt it but it’s only gonna take a few times interrupting the pattern might be a different pattern should a new pattern that’s OK we can during this time what is an ideal bedtime routine? What is a nighttime routine that you think would really serve you if you wanna be the most successful person you can be a year from now I wanna be the most successful person I can be what is my bedtime routine look like what is nighttime like what is bedtime routine look like what is what does my eating look like what does my drinking look like and then start to work backwards and make a little plan I’ve had to do that, maybe I wanna meditate maybe stretch maybe I wanna drink that extra glass of water so I’m nice and hydrated. Maybe I wanna turn the TV off and just talk with my partner for 30 minutes whatever it is your nighttime routine specific to you what does that look like for you, so I just want you to recognize this pattern. It came from a very honest place. I need a break. We need a break at the end of the day not disputing that at all, we needed a break it got linked with food. The dopamine hit made our brain go wacko and then the I need a break became. I need the food. I need the wine not a problem but we’re gonna do about it we’re gonna notice the routine we’re gonna pay really close attention we’re gonna try and interrupt the routine where we can and see which way works. Best see where we can interrupt it interrupted as much as we can and then we’re gonna start to think in the background would be an amazing nighttime routine. It doesn’t involve me eating right before I go to bed or over eating, we’ve had a full dinner and this is just piling on and our body doesn’t need it really interrupts our sleep to be overfed when we go to bed alcohol 100% interrupts our sleep sleep last week. We interrupt our sleep now we’ve been craving food it’s not great for us. We’re putting on some weight in our belly, so nighttime eating is a great place. If you just wanna do one thing you can change that will make a great impact. This nighttime overeating is a great place to start to sleep better. It’s gonna make it easier to make good food choices the next day. You’re gonna get better sleep, less cortisol. Alright, I would love for you guys to share with me how you want to try managing your nighttime overeating, and if you found this helpful, please share with a friend. Can’t talk to you guys next week. Thanks, have a good week.