How to Stop Overeating in the Afternoon - 7 Tips Taste for Truth - Weight Loss Encouragement

When I ask women what time of day they most often break their boundaries, I usually get one of two answers: either mid-afternoon or evening. Since I've already done a couple of podcast episodes on how to end evening eating, today I'd like to talk about how to stop overeating in the afternoon. Let's begin by looking at why this is a tempting time of day.
Who struggles with afternoon eating? While anyone can struggle with overeating in the afternoon, here are the most common groups of people:
Stay-at-home moms Homeschool moms Retired people People who work from home: entrepreneurs, writers, etc. Homemakers I think the reason these groups struggle the most is because we're actually at home in the afternoon! Chances are good that people who work outside the home would love to start eating at 3:00 in the afternoon but their jobs prevent them from eating at that time. Although if you often pop down to the vending machine at work or in your college dorm around 3:00 in the afternoon, you know the struggle to stop overeating in the afternoon.
Why do we feel like breaking boundaries in the afternoon? If we want to stop overeating in the afternoon, we need to first find out why we're tempted to eat in the afternoon. This will be different for everyone, and also different on each day of the week. You may find that you eat for all of the following reasons. Let's take a look at some of the reasons we're inclined to overeat in the afternoon.
We've already used up all our willpower for the day. In my interview with Drew Dyck on how to increase self-control on the Christian Habits Podcast, Drew said that we each have a limited supply of willpower. Towards the end of the day, that willpower starts to dwindle--so what we could have said no to in the morning, we may not have the strength to say no to in the afternoon. We're bored. Often we've been busy all morning working or spending time with the kids and by mid-afternoon we're bored. We want some excitement in our lives! We're physically tired. We may also be plain old tired and in need of a nap! The problem is that we're often either not in a situation where we can take a nap, or we're in a situation where we can take a nap but for whatever reason we don't do it. When that happens we feel like eating because we think a snack will perk us up. We're tired of working. Sometimes we're not physically tired, we're just tired of working. Tired of always being on task and always responsible. If we don't feel like we can justify taking a break, we'll be tempted eat in rebellion. We're emotional. If something happened earlier in the day to upset us and we didn't take the time to process our emotions, those emotions will keep getting bigger and bigger throughout the day. Soon they'll be so big, they'll spill out and cry, "Let's get something to eat! WE NEED A TREAT!!!!" That often happens around 3:00--and sometimes earlier! We're procrastinating. Another reason we eat in the afternoon is because we've been procrastinating some terrible job all day and one of our best coping techniques for procrastination is to eat. Until we actually do that job, we'll probably feel like breaking our boundaries and eating. We're beating ourselves up for what we didn't get done that morning. Often when we procrastinate, we have a tendency to beat ourselves up. We say, "You got nothing done today, you lazy oaf!!" This just makes us want to open the fridge and eat everything in sight to drown out the sound of our failures. How do we stop overeating in the afternoon? Now that we've seen the reasons for afternoon eating, let's look at some solutions that will help us stop overeating.
Try not to have treats in the house. (Depleted Willpower) If we don't have treats in the house, we'll be far less likely to break our boundaries at 3:00 when our willpower is depleted. We could still drive out and get those treats, but often we're so tired we're unwilling to make the effort to drive anywhere. Another option is to ask