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" It&amp;#039;s 5:10pm, and you&amp;#039;re awfully proud of yourself as you step out of your office building. You&amp;#039;ve eaten a small breakfast and a sensible, low-cal lunch, and you just know you&amp;#039;ll finish off the day with a light, nutritious supper. If you keep this up, by month&amp;#039;s end you&amp;#039;ll fit into your favorite suit again. Then it happens: Within 10 minutes of walking in your front door you&amp;#039;ve virtually inhaled that leftover hunk of cake you swore you wouldn&amp;#039;t touch. Your diet&amp;#039;s shot, and you haven&amp;#039;t even had dinner yet.  &amp;quot;Consuming most of your calories at night and being overweight often go hand in hand,&amp;quot; says Allan Geliebter, Ph.D., a research psychologist at the Obesity Research Center at St. Luke&amp;#039;s-Roosevelt Hospital in New York. For one thing, your metabolism -- the rate at which you burn calories -- is lower when you sleep. &amp;quot;This suggests that much of what you eat late at night could end up stored as fat,&amp;quot; says Dr. Geliebter. What&amp;#039;s more, once you start eating, you may have trouble stopping, explains Anne Dubner, a nutrition consultant in Houston. Bingers can easily down 500 calories -- that&amp;#039;s five slices of cheese, half a bag of potato chips or three-fourths of a pint of ice cream -- without paying much attention. If you&amp;#039;re really overindulging, you get a double whammy: Not only do you take in excess calories, but by stretching your stomach you may later require even more food in order to feel full -- which will set you up for further binges, according to Dr. Geliebter&amp;#039;s research. But if you can get those evening eating sprees under control, you can easily cut 500 excess calories a night -- for a loss of about five pounds in a month. The secret is to know the prime times for P.M. bingeing -- and the ways you can then break the pattern. You come home, face your demanding (and hungry) kids and household responsibilities, and within minutes are sideswiped by the hunger you were able to ignore in the office or while running around doing errands. Or maybe you try to crank up your energy by having something sweet. Your best dietary defense? Don&amp;#039;t come home on an empty stomach. You&amp;#039;re most vulnerable to bingeing when your blood sugar levels are low, which happens if you undereat or wait too long to eat during the day. In fact, to ward off hunger pangs you should eat every three to four hours, says June M. Lay, a certified nutritional consultant in New York. That means consuming breakfast, lunch and a snack or two. For the snack, you&amp;#039;ll want low-cal foods that include quick-digesting carbs to fill you up and raise your blood sugar fast, plus slower-digesting protein to keep your blood sugar level stable. Overall, says Lay, you should aim to eat 50 to 70 percent of your daily calories before dinner. Another antibinge tactic: the five-minute rule. For one week, when you get home and feel yourself inching toward that bag of chips, hold off for five minutes. The second week, wait 10 minutes. And so on. &amp;quot;Once you can control the urge to binge for 20 minutes, you&amp;#039;ll generally be successful at stopping yourself from impulsive eating,&amp;quot; says Lay, gaining not only a sleeker body but also a sense of control over what you put in your mouth. Still, you may want something. So plan ahead. Keep on hand low-cal beverages like mineral water (mix it half-and-half with cider or orange juice), carrot juice or iced herbal tea. &amp;quot;People often think they&amp;#039;re hungry when they&amp;#039;re really thirsty,&amp;quot; says Lay. And stock up on those carb-protein &amp;quot;binge-busting&amp;quot; snacks. Finally, keep proven binge-triggering foods (fat-sugar combos like ice cream and refined flour-sugar combos like fat-free baked goods) out of the house. Or if you want occasional treats for the rest of the family, buy them in small containers so that there aren&amp;#039;t half-empty boxes or bags around to tempt you. &amp;quot;Marketing studies show that people who buy large boxes of food eat more of it,&amp;quot; says Stephen Gullo, Ph.D., a New York health psychologist and author of Thin Tastes Better. The very sight of food you enjoy produces neurochemical changes that fuel your appetite, says Dr. Gullo. Taking &amp;quot;just a taste&amp;quot; or two is risky because the calories pile up without your even noticing that you&amp;#039;re eating. Again, a preventive binge-busting snack protects against what Dr. Gullo calls &amp;quot;mini buffets.&amp;quot; Choose snacks that keep your mouth busy, suggests Dubner -- gum, mints or something crunchy or squishy like baby carrots, small pretzels or cherry tomatoes. And vow never to eat standing up, which leads you to the kind of mindless noshing that adds up to massive amounts of calories, says Dr. Gullo. Taking tastes to coax your children to eat, polishing off their (often substantial) leftovers -- these stolen nibbles can really sabotage your diet. Dubner has a client who gained 60 pounds &amp;quot;helping&amp;quot; her kids eat. To break the habit, make a deal with yourself that will limit what you consume. For instance, decide that if your daughter leaves more than five French fries, you&amp;#039;ll eat two; if she leaves fewer than five, you won&amp;#039;t eat any. And if you&amp;#039;re feeding the kids before you eat dinner, have a low-cal snack first so that you&amp;#039;ll be less tempted to pick off their plates. Okay, so you&amp;#039;ve worked eight hours, cooked dinner, cleaned up, played with the children and put them to bed. No wonder you feel like having &amp;quot;a little something&amp;quot; as a reward. Go ahead, says Adam Drewnowski, Ph.D., director of the Human Nutrition Program at the University of Michigan School of Public Health in Ann Arbor. &amp;quot;Experiment with a small piece of really good dark chocolate,&amp;quot; he suggests. &amp;quot;The rush of pleasure may be enough to satisfy you.&amp;quot; Nutritionist Lay firmly believes that people should be able to have a treat every day in order not to feel deprived, which can lead to bingeing. You may also want to save part of your dessert, like a cookie (instead of eating it right after dinner), so that you have a treat to look forward to. Other low-guilt ways to reward yourself: chocolate-flavored decaf, apple tea, nonfat frozen yogurt. But once you&amp;#039;ve eaten your treat, steer clear of the kitchen. Shut off the kitchen lights if you have to. &amp;quot;The availability of your favorite snack foods creates cravings,&amp;quot; explains Dr. Gullo. And brush your teeth to signal that you&amp;#039;re done eating for the night. Keep in mind, too, that food isn&amp;#039;t the only way to reward yourself. Other pampering pleasures include calling friends, writing in a journal, giving yourself a manicure or reading a book. It&amp;#039;s 3am, and your 2-year-old is coughing uncontrollably. Or your 5-year-old has a nightmare. You attend to their needs, then feel like a little nosh. Short-circuit your urge to binge by keeping a box of herbal tea bags out on the kitchen counter so you can easily make something to sip on, says Lay. Or have the tiniest of snacks, like an animal cracker or half a handful of cereal and some skim milk. If you frequently get up because you need to use the bathroom, try not to eat or drink for at least two hours before retiring for the night, says Dr. Geliebter. For the same reason, avoid alcohol late at night. Instead, get a good night&amp;#039;s sleep -- and resolve the next morning to eat most of your calories before the sun goes down. By snacking between meals on a mix of low-fat, low-cal carbs (for quick energy) and protein (for sustained energy), you can protect yourself from hunger-induced eating sprees. Try these satisfying, low-guilt combos (all are under 250 calories). 1 slice smoked turkey on apple-flavored rice cake (60 calories) 4 graham crackers, each with 1/4 tablespoon peanut butter (155 calories) 1 cup green pea soup (164 calories) 1 slice pumpernickel bread spread with 1 ounce smoked salmon cream cheese spread (170 calories) 1 bowl mixed Chex cereal (1 cup corn plus 1/4 cup whole-grain wheat for a sweet and crunchy combo) and 1/2 cup skim milk (173 calories) 1 cup plain low-fat yogurt with tangerine chunks (175 calories) 10 low-fat baked tortilla chips and 1/2 cup fat-free bean dip (175 calories) 1 1/4 ounces lean roast beef on 1 large deli-style rye matzo with caraway (193 calories) 3/4 cup instant oatmeal with 1 tablespoon each skim milk and maple syrup (203 calories) 2 ounces part-skim string mozzarella with jalape\u00F1o pepper on 8 thin wheat crackers (230 calories) "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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