an odd realization

I almost always have problems with late afternoon and evening -- overeating and bingeing. Any time I binge, it's almost always after dinner and if I overeat at a meal, it's almost always dinner.

I think part of it is that I'm almost always STARVING by the time dinner is ready. I'm not sure how to help this problem. I've tried eating a snack if I get hungry in the afternoon, but sometimes I'm not hungry until 4 or 4:30pm, and I can't usually take a break then. Yesterday I ate some yogurt, fruit, and flaxseed meal at 5:30pm, thinking that would tide me over, but I was so hungry by the time I got home that I ate a dozen of my kids' french fries before I got my salad ready to eat. Then, in spite of being full, I kept eating until I was quite overfull -- a Pop Tart, some pie, some potato chips, some ice cream (all junk food, you'll notice). Then I felt icky and sort of bewildered as to why on earth I do this to myself.

Anyway, besides that issue, I realized that I often don't want dinner to end. I think for me, it signals that it's almost bedtime (we usually are upstairs putting our girls to bed shortly after 8pm and stay upstairs, going to bed around 9 -- dh gets up for work at 4:30 and I get up at 5:30 to exercise). Bedtime means an end to the day and I'm never ready for that. I rarely feel as though I did anything constructive or fun and I get down that life is flying by. I do work full time, which, though you could say is constructive, I don't LOVE my job. To be perfectly honest, I wish I didn't have to work -- or at least not full time. I guess life just seems a repetitive grind to me and eating both puts off going to bed and adds some excitement.

We don't usually do anything fun in the evenings. After dinner and dishes, we usually only have 30 minutes or so til the girls' bedtimes. We read the paper, open the mail, and poof! It's 8pm. Of course, none of this navel gazing would explain why I have trouble staying out of the kitchen on Saturdays. I suppose that I need to start doing fun things for myself. I guess I KNOW that, but I'm having difficulty putting it into practice. My current excuse is that it's very difficult to do anything with my leg still hurting as much as it does (not an untrue excuse). The honest truth is that I have always felt horrible guilt whenever I do something that takes away from my family.

It doesn't help that my dh has confided that though he realizes I need to have a life away from them, he feels very stressed out by taking care of the girls by himself. Guilt, guilt, guilt.

I think I will put a smallish plan into action. Each weeknight I will make the effort to either do something directly with the girls (play a game, etc) or do something I enjoy. On the weekends I will do at least one thing just for myself -- one thing -- at least once during the weekend.