Sleep eating

Hi there, I saw someone mention this in a post and wondered if anyone has any ideas why it occurs and how to deal with it. I have been having a real problem with it lately. I try to keep ice cold crystal lite or sugarfree jello by my bed to distract me but I will go looking for some sweet carbs. I am cleaning my kitchen out little by little so I was so desperate last night I ate pre-maid grahmn cracker crust. I don't know if it is legitimately a low blood sugar thing. ( I do eat a snack before bed usually) or if I am just mental!!!! Any ideas? Lucy

Lucy--This is something that really concerns and frightens me. I lean in this direction too. Please don't take this the wrong way as it goes for me to--but...this is probably the biggest area that has proved to me that I am not normal and never will be. I first noticed and thought about this a lot when I was taking phen-fen. Suddenly I was pushing my food away when full and not waking up in the middle of the night looking for food. I kept thinking about why the difference--for me somehow I have decided there is just something chemically that works different for me. I just don't believe that people who are not MO do this on a regular basis. Of course early after my surgery I wasn't doing this and wasn't even tempted--when it started to resurface I noticed and became concerned. I have a rule that I stick with most of the time--I don't do it. I always keep a drink next to my bed so I just drink that. To make matters worse for me--I wake up a million times a night to go to the bathroom and that is when I tend to want to do it--when I'm staggering my way back to bed--I'll stagger on by the refrig. Good luck to you battling this Lucy.

I thought sleep eating was like sleep walking? getting up and eating with no conscious recollection? here is an article with other links on sleep eating. HTH http://www.stanford.edu/~dement/Sleepeating.html http://www.anred.com/nsred.html there is treatment. It begins with a clinical interview and a night or two at a sleep-disorders center where brain activity is monitored. Sometimes medication is helpful, but sleeping pills should be avoided. They can make matters worse by increasing confusion and clumsiness that can lead to injury. Regular use of sleeping pills can also lead to dependency and rebound wakefulness on withdrawal. Instead, ask your doctor about prescription SSRIs. Also helpful are interventions that reduce stress and anxiety; for example, stress management classes, assertiveness training, counseling, and reducing intake of alcohol, street drugs, and caffeine.

When I posted to the "keeping it honest" I referred to my extracurricular(sp) eatting as "sleep eatting" just to give it a name. For me it is not an unconscious act, it's a willful walking down the staircase to the kitchen and diving head first into the fridge to eat the food the eat me troll tells me needs to be eatten! If I never woke to go potty, then I would not hear the troll calling my name. But then when my alarm clock goes off to wake up, I go potty and then go visit the eat me trolls. I have a whole family you see. One lives in the cabinet, one in the fridge, one in my locker at work. For the past several months I've battled every hour of every day with the "want" to eat, even if its sf, low carb, healthy blah blah blah its still calories and grazing. Waiting 2-3 hrs between feedings is as bad as the slow minutes on the tread mill as I force myself to run 30 mins. I do the waiting and the running because its right and good and I am fighting the trolls the best I can. I do not think medication, or sleep pills will fix me, what I need is to get a life and make some friends and find other focuses. Easier said than done, but working on it. Yesterday I but a bottle of splenda sweetened tea by the bed, and drank it instead of wandering down stairs. Sometimes its enough, sometimes not. Yes therapy would be good... Michelle

those trolls have evil twins living at my house. Evenings are hard. I hate sitting around the house or watching TV, occasionally I will just go to the health club. It is hard because DH just wants to stay home & I want to be w/ him but he falls asleep in front of the TV and there I am. alone and bored out of my mind.

This happens to me at times of extreme stress. DH in the military and use to be deployed often. I once woke up with a Snickers bar stuck in my hair and had no clue how it got there. That said... I use to have a habit of getting up at 6am eating something and going back to bed. I read somewhere that to start a new habit or break an old one you have to do it for 6 weeks. I did this and it worked. There are still days I have to talk myself out of having the snack. On another note, sorry I ramble, if it is like an uncontrolable urge, it could be something is missing in your diet. Like those people who eat ashes. You may want to call the doc and have some blood work done. Hugs, Bridget

I am not a sleep eater, in fact the minute my head hits the pillow it remains there until my alarm clock scares the crap out of me! I am curious if sleep eating or waking up in the middle of the night in search of food has to do with calorie/intake level by day? I ask from sort of an anthropological point of view...in other words, when we were evolving in the days of survival of the fittest, we had to hunt and kill or be hunted and killed. And so, perhaps if when we were cave women, we were somewhat malnourished, and protecting our cave kids, and listening to our cave husbands snore while filling the cave with flatulance from too much wooly mammoth...(I digress), could we still have the need to search for food during a less threatening time in a 24 hour cycle? Anybody with me here? In other words, for those of you who get out of bed to eat...is your calorie range by day a maintenance range or are you in a losing phase and therefore eating at a lower intake? ...just curious...indulge me and my whacked out theory (not yet crystallized) if you want...or feel free to share why my DH should begin to keep a file on me as to why I should be "put away." Karen

Karen, I think there is much to be said for those primal instincts. I have read enough about it to agree that controlling our intake is, on a certain level, the exact opposite of what our primal bodies signal for survival. Of course,I don't think that you or I are endorsing this as an excuse for poor eating but I suspect that you are on to something. I'm curious to see how people respond. And I won't tell your husband...what happens on the Grad Boards stays on the Grad Boards! Judi

Thanks for being my anthropology 101 study buddy, and for not outing me to my DH who thinks mostly I am OK, but destined to the home of mad genius on several levels. Not sure we are going to have any who are with us on this one... Karen

Karen--I am in maintenance range. I do not get out of bed to eat--I get out of bed to Pee (lots of x a night-but that is another story) and then I get a sudden urge to eat. I have vowed not to do this as to me it signals a return to very bad old habits, but the fact that the urge is there is frightening. I noticed this when I was MO and then noticed it go away when on phen-fen. In the early stages after my surgery--maybe up to a year I never did it and suddenly I noticed it re-appear. The reason why I think it is chemical is because of the way it totally disappeared when on phen-fen. In my humble opinion, for me this goes along with the whole mental aspect of being MO. I also truly believe that some of us are just missing something, whether it is ghrelin or some other hormone, I just think I am different from "normal" people. Hmm-makes it kind of sad sounding but it's my theory and I am sticking with it. As you can see I have wacked out theories also. At times with this theory I wondered if I was just making excuses-but because sometimes I notice such a significant difference, it reinforces my theory in my mind at least