A normal twenty-four hour day for a night eater looks drastically different from the day of someone with no eating disorder. Learning to use some common tools, such as food diaries and meal planning, will give you a better grasp of your eating patterns. Meal plans and food diaries provide the beginning steps to control and change those patterns.

Diane has expressed concerns about her eating patterns. “When I wake up at night, I feel a compulsive urge to eat and I feel I won’t be able to fall asleep if I don’t eat,” she said. To make it easier to get back to sleep, Diane keeps food by her bedside so she won’t have to go downstairs when she wakes in the middle of the night. This also reduces the chance of disturbing her husband and children’s sleep.

In the morning, when she wakes to get the kids ready for school, she has no appetite or interest in food. She tries to force herself to eat what the kids leave over from their breakfast, but usually ends up throwing the leftovers away. As a rule, it’s not until the kids return from school and she begins to prepare dinner that her appetite returns. After she and her family eat dinner, she finds herself picking at the food left on the plates. While she eats the leftovers, she feels frustrated and annoyed with herself because she knows that she is overeating. She hopes this extra food will reduce her need to wake up in the middle of the night to eat. Most often it doesn’t work.

Eating with Night Eating Syndrome (NES)

The average person begins the day with breakfast, usually sometime before nine o’clock in the morning. Lunch may be eaten around noon or one o’clock in the afternoon. Some people may have a snack in the late afternoon to hold them over until dinner is served. Depending on schedules, most people will eat dinner around six o’clock in the evening, while some may dine as late as nine PM. After the evening meal, most people may enjoy a dessert, but, in general, they will not eat much more before going to bed. This pattern may vary depending on work and school schedules and cultural preferences. For example, Europeans usually eat their dinners later than Americans. Overall, the average normal eater will eat three meals and occasional snacks during the typical twenty-four hour day.

As a night eater, this pattern of eating may seem foreign to you. You probably wake up in the morning with little or no appetite. Some night eaters force themselves to eat a little something to try to stay on some type of normal eating schedule. But even if you skip breakfast, you may not have an appetite even at lunchtime. By dinnertime your interest in food has returned and you will eat a great deal during and after dinner. You will not only keep on eating after dinner, but you often may continue eating until late at night. Perhaps you may even postpone your bedtime just to eat some more food. You may find it hard to fall asleep, and then you make wake up not long after going to sleep, and again later in the night. During these awakenings you may feel not only the need to eat, but also the fear that you will not be able to get back to sleep unless you eat some more.

One night eater said, “I could work myself into a panic attack just thinking about having to go to bed without any snacks. When I stay over at other people’s homes, I will either sneak something from the fridge and hide it going up the stairs or I’ll say good night to everyone and sneak back down and raid the refrigerator. It doesn’t make any difference what I eat. It just has to be something.”

Eating something before bedtime may help you feel relaxed and satisfied. These feelings help you get to sleep. Your nighttime snacks may continue one or more times during the night. When you wake up in the morning, once again you will have no appetite.

excerpt from Overcoming Night Eating Syndrome: A Step-by-step Guide to Breaking the Cycle by Albert J. Stunkard M.D., Sara L. Thier, Kelly C. Allison Ph.D.