Sleeplessness Leads to Eating After Midnight: Not Good!

I have started having a problem sleeping again. As I watch the clock moved across early moring hours, I am weary, but fully awake. I start to feel the desire to eat something, but never for anything healthy. Late night is no time, in my mind, for salad or salad makings. It’s the hour for sweets that are quick to open, don’t need cooking, and can be enjoyed silently at the kitchen table.

It’s ironic that I should have this problem with eating at night, because I had insomnia in the last months before we moved from California in 2014. The doctors prescribed Ambien, and it helped me to sleep, but I found that after I had eaten ice cream or cookies, I didn’t remember having eaten already. So, I would ask for more, thinking that I was being deprived by a heartless husband. We figured out the problem when my oldest grandson, Tay, came to visit.

I had taken my sleeping pill during dinner, as it took a couple of hours to work. I had dessert of ice cream, and than I left Tay and Douglas talking downstairs. I don’t know how many hours passed, but I awoke and started yelling down the stairs that I wanted some ice cream. Tay came to the bottom of the stairs and told me that I had already eaten some ice cream. I was gobsmacked at his claim. That was the last night for the medication, as it was the reason I was gaining so much weight and not remembering what I was eating.

Eventually, I had to find a more natural way to handle the insomnia, as other sleeping pills turned me into a sleeping online buyer. I thought that someone was stealing my identity, but realized that that was crazy, as the packages were being delivered to me. After returning loads of packages to Macy’s and Amazon, I came off of all prescribed and non-prescribed sleep aids.

So, I have to do my homework again, and find ways to tackle the insomnia and not let it defeat my efforts to lose weight. Probably I will start by turning off my Kindle e-reader at least two hours bfore bed, although I admit that I love to read in bed, along with complete word puzzles. But as they have me up eating Moon pies, cookies, and other unhealthy foods, I just have to do what I need to do, so that I can be the healthiest possible. It seems that if my body is awake, my stomach wants to eat, and that is not good!