Set a cutoff time.
“I generally eat dinner with the kids around 6 p.m., so I made sure that we were all done by our 7 p.m. cutoff,” says Judy Koutsky, a writer who went on a mission to curb late-night eating for a whole month. “Instead of a more vague, ‘no snacking before bed,’ a hard rule of ‘no food after 7 p.m.’ was actually easier to follow because it was so rigid.” Your cutoff time may be earlier or later depending on your schedule, but it’s still helpful to have one in mind.
Schedule your meals.
“Waiting too long before your next meal can cause you to become “hangry” and more likely to binge so set up regularly scheduled meals throughout the day to keep your blood sugars level and prevent ravenous hunger in the evening,” says Lauren O’Connor, M.S., R.D.N., owner of Nutri Savvy Health. If you need a snack between meals, she recommends keeping it to 150 calories and trying to hit two food groups. “A good example is an apple (fruit) and up to 1 tablespoon of peanut butter (healthy fat),” says O’Connor.
