Secret eating has had a lot of press; it is normally characterised as a habit of the obese, but you don’t get off that easily. Secret eating is really any form of eating that you hide from others or even yourself. I know that sounds strange, how can you hide eating from yourself?? Think back over the last couple of weeks. Has there been a time where you have:
- Eaten whilst cooking?
- Got a bar of chocolate or crisps in the car and eaten it before getting home?
- Taken the leftovers from your partner’s plate?
All these little traits happen in what we at Burn It like to call, your zombie state, that’s where you know what you are doing isn’t the right thing to do so you almost try to block it out or delete it from your memory, you certainly wouldn’t remember to add those calories into a food diary!
Of course secret eating has a serious side, if left unchecked you can find that chocolate bar from the service station turning into a trip to McDonalds or Krispy Kreme, and the taking of leftovers turns into you making bigger portion sizes.
Eating at night is the worst form of secret eating and one that more people suffer from than we will ever know about, its proper name is ‘Night Eating Syndrome.’
Many people eat a late-night snack every now and then, but when does night eating become a mental illness? When people obsessively consume at least a quarter of their daily intake after dinner, or when they wake up in the middle of the night to eat at least twice a week, experts say. As many as 6 million people suffer from Night Eating Syndrome, including about 9 percent of extremely obese individuals
When you eat whilst watching TV your brain is watching the TV and not concentrating on what you are eating so often you will eat much more than you had planned to, or you will finish the snack you brought to the living room but because you weren’t consciously aware of what you were eating your brain still thinks its hungry so sends you back for more.
Eat well and balanced throughout the day, don’t back end your fuel intake, your body needs energy to help you keep making healthy choices. Limit your buying of snack food, if it’s not in the house you can’t binge on it.
