Structured Mealtimes and Snacks Stimulus Control

What are the steps to help you go about limiting yourself to less frequent and healthier snacks? One simple step is to use stimulus control, or, in plain English, don’t keep the forbidden foods in your home. Stimulus control means limiting your exposure to the foods you like to eat. This strategy is helpful for all types of night eaters, but probably most specifically for the evening and nighttime overeaters and the cravings night eaters. However food is not the only thing that acts as a trigger signaling you to eat. Other stimuli, or situations, could provoke you to begin to graze.

Where do you eat your evening and nighttime snacks? Do you eat them in the kitchen, or do you have a favorite chair in your family room where you sit and snack? Do you have food readily available in that place? The goal of stimulus control is to have one designated place where you eat your meals and snacks. Usually, this would be at your dinner table or in your kitchen.

Exercise: Your Designated Eating Place
- A designated eating place might be your dining table or the table in your kitchen. Wherever that place may be, designate it as your eating place and try never to eat anywhere else in your home.
- If you are sitting in your favorite chair in front of the television and you would like a snack, remember to eat it in your designated eating area. If you are truly hungry, then getting up from your chair won’t seem like too much effort.
- If you want to eat because you are bored or for some other reason, then getting up to go to your designated eating place will seem to take more effort.
- The extra effort will also give you a chance to evaluate just how hungry you really are.

Although an important step in controlling your stimuli successfully is not to consume food at your former grazing spots, there is one exception to this rule. First, we are assuming that you haven’t selected your bed as your designated area, and, if you have, we strongly encourage you to rethink your choice. As you decrease the amount you eat when you wake at night, we do encourage you to keep a small snack by your bedside to (1) limit your choices for your nighttime snack and (2) keep you from getting up and out of bed to snack. This doesn’t mean that we want you to keep an unlimited number of snacks in your room. In fact, we want you to keep only your small, chosen snack there when you go to bed. Don’t choose a snack that smells particularly attractive or it will be so irresistible you will eat it before you go to sleep.

Related posts:

1. Types of Night Eating Syndrome – The Compelled Evening and Nighttime Overeater
2. Eating with Night Eating Syndrome (NES)
3. How to Raise Awareness about Automatic Thoughts in the Evening
4. Embarrassment and Night Eating Disorder
5. Understanding Eating Patterns
6. Night Eating Syndrome – Tips for Keeping Track of Your Food Intake
7. Eating Disorder Guide – What Can You Do At Home?
8. Sleeping Patterns – Up All Night?
9. Night Eating Syndrome and Disturbed Sleep
10. Night Eating Syndrome and Polysomnography