Night Eating Syndrome Support Group

after several weeks of not posting anything and after several trials on what would finally helping me to beat NES I can now happily confirm, that Enough - Mimi's suggestions to go on to Insulin resistance diet to eliminate NES - which I did - are proving to be very helpful and - I NO LONGER EAT AT NIGHT!!!

This is unbelievable, after many years of waking up 5-7 times a night and eating anything reachable I now wake up, go to toilet, have a sip of water and go back to bed!!

After several posts/messages posted by Enough (Mimi) about how the Insulin Resistance diet she went on has helped her to beat NES I have decided to give it a go too.

Basically, I have excluded sugar from my diet in any form from the begining - this means fruit too, have been on a very low carbohydrate and high protein and high fat diet and it has worked for me!! I have excluded refined sugars and processed foods, quit drinking coffee and concentrated on hight fiber foods too. After few weeks on this I have slowly been allowing certain kind of fruit (with the lowest amount of sugar in) back to my diet - raspberries, strawberries, bluberries, pears.

For the first 3-4 days I have experienced sugar withdrawal symptoms which is normal - little irritation, headaches, nausea and a bit of a muscle tension. This was gone after a few days.

I have then been waking up and eating for another few days - thinking it will not work!! But I hang in there and continued with my diet and after another 3-4 days my night eating completely stopped. I could not believe that my night eating has had a lot to do with the sugar levels in my body for all those years.

My sleep is still a bit light but I do not wake up wit this enourmously huge cravings to eat, I drink a bit of a water and go back to bed.

I also try to avoid bread, pasta, (only wholegrain) and I am checking sugar amounts on everything I buy.

It is well worth it!! I am loosing weight on the top of it and my energy levels are so much higher then before. What was needed is to cut the sugar out of the life and wait for the results.

I do recommend everyone to make his/her own research about Insulin Resistance Diet first.

For me it looks like it does work!!

Thank you Enough - Mimi for your posts and advice - it has helped me a lot!!!

Best of luck to ya all!!

vladi

Thanks so much.

I am still on this diet, I have allowed later on more fruit onto it, e.g pears, little apple, sometimes even banana. I have nights when I don't wake up at all, I have nights when I wake up once, have a bite of an apple and go back to bed and I have nights when I drink only glass of water and don't feel any urge to eat at all. I have noticed that if I cut the sugar out completely - that means including fruit - I have much better nights then when I am munching on sweet fruit. For example the other day I have "sinned", had a chocolate bar with a family visitors and woke up with an urge to eat around three times a night!!

For me it's best to cut the sugar completely including fructose -that's when I don't eat at night at all.

I am not very familiar with Atkins diet, sorry, but here are some links about IR diet:

http://www.heartlandnaturopathic.com/irdiet.htm

http://ezinearticles.com/?Why-is-Refined-Sugar---Known-As- White-Sugar---Bad-for-You?&id=119462

Also I am trying to consume foods with only low GI index - worth checking this out!!

Best of luck!!

I have tried many things for NES, medications, reading books on the subject, eating more during the day, locking food away at night, even recently have been listening to hypnotherapy mp3's for weight control and binge eating at night. Sometimes when i wake i really do feel hungry and have an appetite, and sometimes i just feel the urge to eat to go back to sleep although im not truely hungry. I have since the summer, lost about 10 lbs because my night eating has improved, but only from the point of gaining weight and consuming 3000 calories in one night to eating about 1300 calories in a night. For me to lose the remainder of the weight the night eating has to stop completely or be limited to 400-500 calories over the course of the night. I would love to be able to sleep through the night without getting up to eat at all just for the sake of being NORMAL and being able to sleep at other people's homes without worrying about what Im going to eat when i wake up. Do you thing the Insulin Resistance Diet could work for me? I also have a very strong sweet tooth and it worries me if I would be able to stick to a plan of this kind!