The Kitchen is Closed

I have been a night-time eater.  Eating at night has always been a thing for me.  Before surgery and even now as well.  Eating at night is not healthy but also doesn’t allow your body sufficient time for digestion before bed.  Eating at night isn’t optimum for weight loss either because our body needs time to burn it off.  Still, the call of the kitchen of an evening continues to be quite loud at times.

After you’ve finished dinner and cleaned up the kitchen, it can be easy to return into the kitchen and give in to night-time eating.  Following dinner, limit yourself to a healthy planned snack.

I developed a strategy that has helped me.  One evening it was late and we wanted to eat dinner at a restaurant.  We checked various restaurants and they were closed.  We’d drive by or walk up to the door to look at the hours only to find it closed.  All of the closed restaurants got me thinking…..my kitchen could have hours too.  It opens in the mornings (just as restaurants do) for breakfast, open for appropriate meal times but it could have a closing time too.  This will prevent you from engaging in senseless snacking.  Even if you have to hang a “closed” sign on your refrigerator or kitchen door, consider it closed for the day.

As we searched for an open restaurant to eat dinner, I would never have knocked on the door for it to open for us.  As hungry as we were, I wouldn’t have walked through the front door if it were unlocked requesting them to open for us.  Same thing could apply for my kitchen.  Hmmm, maybe I needed to apply this train of thought to my very own kitchen.

My strategy is that my kitchen now has a closing time.  We eat dinner, clean up and then the kitchen is closed.  My closing time is 7:00 p.m.  It has been an adjustment in my thinking but I truly consider the kitchen is closed at 7:00 p.m.  The strategy of the kitchen being closed at a certain time has helped me tremendously in curbing my night-time eating.  As with any habit, especially one blazed in my head as evening/night-time eating, it took time and some reflection as to that evening when the restaurants were closed.  It has worked.

The only exception is that I allow myself a PLANNED snack (protein bar) that I enjoy.  The key is planned and I’m not going back/forth to the kitchen because it is closed.  I decided that was a compromise as to something I enjoy, wouldn’t feel deprived yet still allowed me to observe the closing time of my kitchen.

Give it a try.  When you think of going into the kitchen of an evening, try observing the closing hours.   It takes awhile to take but when it does, it has made a difference in my head hunger.  Now, I just don’t do it.  The kitchen is CLOSED.

Believe In Yourself,
Cathy, CLC
Certified Life Coach, Weight Loss Surgery Coach
Certified Back On Track Facilitator