Night eating - has this ever happened to you?

(Summer) #1

Hi, im new to this thread and relatively new to keto, 3 months. Haven’t had a miracle but have have seen some results:)
One issue I have is that I end up eating after I have fallen asleep. I’m not sure if this is a separate issue but I typically get up at least once at night and eat ( it’s always keto approved) but it it may be a larger than I would have normally eaten in quantity (I’m not always sure bc im typically asleep or barely awake). I’m not sure if my body is starving? Has this happened to anyone???
It’s very frustrating when I have a successful day but consume a lot of calories at night, in the middle of the night ( sometimes some macadamia nuts, a low net carb 4gram protein bar or)…

(squirrel-kissing paper tamer) #2

I started doing this when I was 19 and continued to do it for a over a decade. I tried a number of things including setting up a chair barrier to the kitchen. At some point I realized that while I was mostly asleep there was enough of me awake to get past the chairs and to the fridge. I was going for straight sugar when I did it. I read a bunch but never really got to the bottom of WHY but did learn that it became a serious habit that I had to fully wake up and deal with for many months before I stopped.

Throughout the years I have relapsed and weirdly enough I did it last night for the first time in over six months. I had shoved two spoonfuls of my housemate’s strawberry jam into my mouth before the good witch in my brain put a stop to it.

I used to think I was using it to get back to sleep or to sleep better. That’s the best I could come up with. Looking for a sugar crash to keep me down the rest of the night. I have consumed things in the middle of the night that I would NEVER have eaten during the day (maple syrup straight from the bottle, spoon fulls of brown sugar, etc.)

Brush before bed, have water next to the bed, put something in your path that forces you to wake up, keep the light on in the kitchen for example. Try a snack before bed if you’ve had an early dinner to see if that makes a difference.

It happened most when I was calorie restricting. Are you eating enough during the day? I’ve been trying to eliminate my evening cocoa bar snack for two weeks. This could be my body telling I need to eat more (or having a tantrum, IDK) Best wishes!

(Summer) #3

I have been doing this for awhile too, on and off. Years.
And it was always when I was restricting my food intake.
Thank you for responding bc now I don’t feel so weird.

Now that I’m trying a new diet, ( keto) thankfully I have had enough self control to only “binge” on approved items, lol, which makes me wonder about how coherent I am? I feel like I know what I’m but I do t care. For once.

I too, in the past used to eat spoons of brown sugar, peanut butter with sugar mixed in it, syrup… all that. Ugh.

It’s not a pleasant thing bc I feel like I try so hard during the day and then it’s worthless bc of this habit at night.
I’ve tried removing all foods, chugging water, eating before sleep, taking diet pills before bed. I’ve tried it all. It’s an issue and I’m sick of it.

(Jay Patten) #4

Wow, this is very interesting. Are you sleep walking/ eating? Or just waking up because you are so hungry?

(Summer) #5

I think that I am waking up hungry and with cravings. I also think that I am half way asleep so I am lacking my normal self-control. And lastly, I think that when I am sleepy/tired, I do not have to deal with feelings of guilt from eating a larger amount of food.

(Jennifer) #6

I struggle with this. I have done it since I was a teen. Sometimes I’d fuzzily remember, sometimes I’d only know because there would be some evidence (funky brown stuff in my teeth from Oreos, though I’d brushed my teeth before bed… Chips in the fridge… Ice Cream in the pantry…)

The only thing that has really helped me (and I’m not entirely sure why) is IF/TRE. I usually fast for 20 - 25 hours per day (one meal a day, usually at night). The first day or two, I will wake up, and I have to talk myself out of it (which is hard, because I have some major brain fog), but after that, I sleep through the night, which is amazing all by itself.

(Bunny) #7

Sounds natural to me!

Been experimenting with this too:

I eat at 3:00 am sometimes it is what I like to call a bi-phasic-circadian-rhythm and sleeping every 4 hours because I’m eating type 2 resistant starch and food when I wake up to spike some insulin rather than face that giant 8 hour cortisol spike in contrast to my Ketogenic diet, experimental on my part (burn actual body fat?). I also believe from many historical references sleeping 8 hours is unnatural[1]. The benefits you get from 8 hours of sleep can be doubled (stage 4 Delta 1-4 hertz REM’s) in 4 hour increments.

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I started to notice I was only sleeping every 4 hours (naturally; not planned; wanting to eat) when I started incorporating type 2 resistant starch into my Ketogenic diet, so I did some searches in the past to research (study) this which culminated into this post to your questions?

Footnotes:

[1] At Day’s Close: Night in Times Past - Roger Ekirch “…references to the first and second sleep started to disappear during the late 17th Century. This started among the urban upper classes in northern Europe and over the course of the next 200 years filtered down to the rest of Western society. …”

[2] Supercharge your health by sleeping less – Polyphasic sleep & it’s effects on cortisol: “…What do Da Vinci, Napolean, Thomas Jefferson, Buckminster Fuller, Nikola Tesla, Thomas Edison, Winston Churchill, Margret Thatcher plus many other noted great minds have in common? They all adhered to some form of polyphasic sleeping. Polyphasic sleeping is the practice of breaking up sleep into multiple time periods (phases) in order to reduce the total number of hours sleep needed. …”

(squirrel-kissing paper tamer) #8

Bunny, are you saying you sleep for 4 hours, wake in the middle of the night, eat type 2 resistant starch and go back to bed OR are you saying you solved the problem you were having at night by eating type 2 resistant starch during the day in your keto diet?

(squirrel-kissing paper tamer) #9

I reckon my monkey brain wants sugar and my human brain is defenseless and not aware enough to protest. My monkey brain knows the way to the kitchen and how to open a bag of oreos without making a sound and my human brain gets involved after it feels my throat swallowing a large lump of food and cold feet on the kitchen floor, and puts a stop to it. If that makes any sense…:rofl:

(Bunny) #10

Eating type 2 resistant starch (raw sweet potato sticks) before sleeping! It does in fact help you sleep but not in the way of 8 hours because it some how effects you gut flora biome to achieve a shorter circadian sleeping rhythm?

(squirrel-kissing paper tamer) #11

I remember reading years ago about eating potato before bed helped the release of melatonin and wondered if that’s why I craved (not potatoes, but) sugar like that in the middle of the night.

(Rob Grantham) #13

Bunny are you saying that some starch in the am helps to reduce cortisol? How much are we talking?

Doesn’t night waking have something to do with blood sugars dropping?

(Rob Grantham) #14

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.huffpost.com/entry/carbs-coffee-cortisol_b_8648314/amp

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #15

It really sounds as though you are not getting enough calories. Eat enough during the day so that you are not hungry at bedtime. Have a pinch or two of salt and a bit of water before going to sleep. See if that helps. As long as you are keeping your carbohydrate low enough (for most people under 20 g/day is low enough), you can safely eat to satiety and your body will make good use of the food you eat, as well as disposing of any excess stored fat you might happen to have hanging around.