Eat Late & Still Lose Weight: The "Exchange" Process

In my quest to lose weight, I've become quite frustrated with my never-ending desire to eat late night meals, often attributed to emotional factors and winding down from stress of the day. What I've noticed is that I tend to engage in these late night eating rituals, often, without much thought.

What I like to call "losing my mind", this eating late at night has led to significant weight gain and, when trying to lose weight, completely blows may hard efforts of the day to maintain control and make good food choices.

In my quest to lose weight, I find I am often overwhelmed by this concept of "eating right". With each day that passes, I am totally focused on what is the right food versus what is the bad food. For the most part, I make good choices. However, by the end of the day, when stress levels are at their peak, I am not longer focused on what is right and wrong.

What I have found to be most successful, in removing the guilt associated with my stress eating at the end of the day, is a process I call the "exchange" process. Rather than fighting my emotional eating binge at the end of the day, and carrying around endless guilt, I've decided to continue making the "right" food choices throughout the day, as this is the easiest process, and then built in an "exchange" process by which I will allow myself to have addition "not so healthy" food products at night provided I do specific activities first.

The activities I use in my exchange process are quite simple. Walk my dog for 30 minutes, do 30 minutes of household chores and even engage in Yoga or meditation on my home television programming. If I complete two of these projects, I allow myself the additional calories in the evening. In doing this, I've continued to lose weight at 1 to 1 ½ pounds per week primarily due to my ability to eat "right" during the day.

By incorporating simple, 100-calorie burning processes into my day, while managing my food intake and limitations to "right" choices, I do not feel as guilty about the excessive indulgence of my evening meals. While most would say eating at night, in unhealthy amounts, will not lead to weight loss, I have seen the opposite affect. However, I do not allow myself this indulgence unless I can honestly say to myself that I have performed the "exchange" activity to permit my evening consumption.