Overpowering eating attacks at night, just before bed

I’ve found I’m rarely hungry since lowering my carbohydrate intake drastically (<70/day and often <50/day). I can’t say I’m never hungry or never crave things, but I can frequently go all day without feeling hungry between meals and even accidentally miss meals if I’m busy and not get hungry at all until hours later.

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Same here. With the exception of last night. I got to jones-ing for some chocolate peanut butter Baskins Robins and had two scoops. Then, since I figured I already blew it, I topped it off with a bowl of cashews. But I’m back on the straight and narrow today. I may not see my usual 1- to 2-pound weight loss this week, but I’m not giving up, either. I’ll still celebrate the 17 pounds I’ve lost and focus on the road ahead.

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I often work evening shifts getting home at midnight or past and feeling hungry. As I am not in the mood for a proper meal and don’t want to experience high morning blood sugars I will make a beverage with a cube of chicken stock in hot water and with a side of a slice of Ryvita crackerbread. .

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I DREAMT I ate a half a carton of chocolate PB ice cream two nights ago.

I don’t have a craving for sweets like I once did, so I found this completely unusual. The Nanaimo bar blurb on the where-are-you-from thread must have programmed me.

One spoon of that ice cream would send me into unwanted oblivion. Yet there I was in that dream, eating spoon after spoon!
So coincidental, @rgcainmd!

But back to this thread.

A lot of people have commented that the OP, @MapleSugar, could be very low when binging.

But when I was VERY HIGH and undiagnosed, I craved sweet stuff like nothing else. My body couldn’t access the sugar in my blood. I compensated by EATING MORE!!!

MapleSugar, I don’t know if you’ve checked your BG level when the binge urge occurs. Maybe that info will help you determine what to do?

The other thing is, candida can cause super super starchy cravings.

The only thing I know to combat that is the acidophilus pills I get at the natural foods store. I get a super power one (100 billion organisms). When I can afford it. But it helps break that candida-based starch-craving madness.

Best to you, @MapleSugar! Each step towards wholeness is another step closer to your goal.

I have night food cravings too but usually crave high fat foods instead of high carb. Just wanted to add that eating right before bed isn’t good for you for a number of reasons other than just weight and diabetes… Such as acid reflux and esophageal erosion. I am starting to make a conscious effort to reduce caving in to those cravings.

I’ve struggled with this from the beginning. There are some hard truths that many of us just don’t want to deal with, well, 'cause they’re hard. REALLY HARD.

One of them is obesity. While everything we all say around here is true about how harmful, and counterproductive our cultural shaming is regarding obesity, which consistently manifests socially as “you did this to yourself” when it comes to T2 diabetes, there are also some hard truths about T2 and obesity: The latter makes the former worse, harder to manage and control, speeds progression of the disease, and exacerbates existing and the development of complications.

The single most effective thing you can do for your situation is lose weight. As one who’s been there, I know how annoying hearing this is. You hear it from, well EVERYBODY. Your doctors. Your family. Friends. Hell, people like me in the DOC.

Yet, we all would be remiss to dance around this, as it IS, truly, the most important factor you’re dealing with. Even those cravings can be better handled – tolerated – by your overall system if you were lean.

As I said above, I come from this with direct experience. While I haven’t been morbidly obese, I’ve been clinically obese – i.e. meeting the medical definition of “obese” in terms of BMI.

I finally “found religion” on this in march/april this year, and like rgcainmd, I’ve been (torturing) myself losing weight since. I’ve dropped 25 lbs, from 240 to 215. It has changed my life, some ways for the better (the obvious ones), some for the worse (being hungry, dizzy, feeling nauseated-hungry and unable to eat easily, I could go on). Getting through my “system” adjusting to a lot less food was tough. But now, I have a new equilibrium.

I walk 30 minutes on the beach 3-5x a week. Vigorous. I still binge before bed a few tines a week – I just seem to need to do that. Since I too am a T2 with insulin, I can manage it. However, I couldn’t, even with insulin, before I started losing the weight and getting the exercise in.

My insulin resistance has improved with weight loss. I’m targeting another 20-30 lbs, at which time my 6’ frame will be hard and lean. I’m very optimistic my exogenous insulin needs will further decrease, maybe I can even get off it entirely.

Anyway, very long and not particularly fun reply to read, as it’s just repeating what we hear so often. However, the truth is the truth, we all should not hide from it. If you don’t wind up dealing with your obesity, that’s okay – it’s not a reflection on you, an indictment of your character, or anything silly like that. You’re life is far more complicated that any of us can possibly know posting here, so it just may not be in the cards.

That doesn’t change the fact, however, that the obesity is a very big component of the problem, and one of the most controllable from the standpoint of cause/effect. If you can focus on this, and meet with some success, it will help more than probably anything else.

Best wishes on your journey!

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Dave! You’re alive!

Hi Sam!

Been through some major chit. MAJOR.

Not doing so well right now – dealing with anxiety and depression problems. Stuff I pooh-pooh’d in others over the years. Now I’m struggling. Getting help, but it’s just crazy to be feeling anxiety like I’m standing at the edge of Half Dome in Yosemite about to fall thousands of feet over the edge, unable to point to something directly causing it.

Trying to get hooked back in with people, so here I am :slight_smile:

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Good to see you back, Dave.

Thanks!

Well, cheer up. I almost ended up down there in October (not looking like it’s going to happen at this point though) and was actually thinking about taking you up on that Betty Burger offer.

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[quote=“LADA_lady, post:24, topic:55904, full:true”]
I DREAMT I ate a half a carton of chocolate PB ice cream two nights ago.

I don’t have a craving for sweets like I once did, so I found this completely unusual.[/quote]After several days without an attack, yesterday when I had just woken up I ate - real life, not a dream - almost a whole carton of ice cream. Lada_lady, you are outclassed.

[quote=“LADA_lady, post:24, topic:55904, full:true”]The other thing is, candida can cause super super starchy cravings.[/quote]Lada_lady, you are a genius. I don’t know if I have any significant chronic or systemic candida phenomena - I don’t know if I even believe in them, or their connection with carbohydrate cravings - but I just realized that I’ve been walking around for weeks with a very unpleasant candida infection in my mouth.

I tried to make an appointment with my GP, who probably would have either brushed me off or sent me to some kind of specialist, but he’s unavailable, as he often is. In the meantime, I have given the family a firm talking-to on the subject of bringing sweets home, and I will start to eat lots of live yogurt and buttermilk, which I happen to like anyway.

Thanks for the idea!

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I recognize so many of the things I see here: midnight ambien binges, the banning of all chocolate ice-cream from the house, scheduled (or unscheduled) ‘cheating’, a family who simply cannot seem to remember that I’m diabetic, cheese for snacking, dreams about doing forbidden things (before diabetes, it was smoking).

I add this only because I don’t think I’ve seen anyone mention my first resort, which is to plan ahead for the fact that at some point you will be out of your mind. This means making sure that whatever else is in the freezer, there is always a full tub of Bryer’s Low Carb chocolate ice-cream in there, and a couple of bars of Safeway’s cheapo 85% dark chocolate. I shave the chocolate over the ice-cream, and if it’s still not enough, I’ll add whipped cream and hazelnuts, and last night, strawberries. Result: husband wants to trade desserts (laugh and say no) and even a fairly bad binge isn’t a total carb disaster. I call it the diabetics consolation prize.

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