Can you move through an entire day eating quality food in reasonable portions for breakfast, lunch and dinner, only to wind up bingeing at night?

If you do you are not alone. Intelligent, competent and successful adult women struggle against night eating urges only to succumb to their cravings. They then binge on high calorie, fat and or food stuffs, and criticize themselves harshly later.

They don't understand why they do this or why they can't resist doing this.  Many acknowledge that their cravings are strong. Over time they will pay attention to their craving and realize that they aren't hungry.  But they binge anyway with the promise that they won't do it tomorrow.

Is this you?

If you have an eating disorder you are using food to soothe your through feelings you can't bear.  Over time you develop a pattern of eating to soothe almost any feeling of discomfort. For some people, maybe you, eventually normal body sensations fall under the category of discomfort you must block or ease through eating.

You lose your appreciation of genuine body signals so you can't respond appropriately.  Tiredness at the end of the day is an experience of lack of energy. You may feel some pressure behind your eyes.  You may feel more vulnerable.  These are normal feelings that signal a need to go to bed and sleep for eight hours.

But if you have an eating disorder you may seek to avoid sleep.  Plus you may not recognize tiredness as a sleep need signal.  When you feel normal tiredness, rather than go to bed, you eat to stop the feeling.  You eat to build up your lagging energy. Yet the real supplier of genuine energy is not food, but sleep.

The next time you are on the verge of eating at night, I invite you to do an experiment.  Instead of eating, prepare yourself nicely for bed and go to sleep.  You might be pleasantly surprised.