Question

I want to stop eating just before I go to bed. How do I do so?

Answer

It may actually be necessary for certain people to eat before they go to bed, such as those with diabetes mellitus, if there is a danger of their becoming hypoglycaemic during the night. Eating just before going to bed is not bad for you unless you suffer from something like a hiatus hernia and acid reflux - in this case, eating before lying down may encourage this reflux. Of course it depends what you eat and how much, but it may well result in your not feeling alert and hungry the next morning.

If you wish to stop eating so late, one method is self control techniques, so that you can control your own behaviour and feelings. Often, such techniques involve self-reward, which may be very important. These are probably more necessary if the goals of treatment are obvious, but the effort required to achieve them is great. There are usually two stages to the treatment, the first of which is self monitoring, which involves keeping daily records of the problem behaviour and the circumstances in which it appears. For example, you might like to record what you eat, not only last thing at night but during the day, and to put the times of that eating, and any associations with the need to eat, such as stressful events, or mood. This will give you an insight into the true extent of your problem and factors that make it worse. This self monitoring will also give you an indication of how much progress you are making. The second stage is to set yourself an achievable target and when that is achieved, to give yourself a reward. For example, good control of your eating last thing at night might be rewarded by the purchase of some new clothes or an outing. It is very important to set yourself achievable targets, perhaps easy targets to start with. Once you are successful at that, slowly increase the difficulty of the target.