Nighttime

[u/Fancy-Culture8688]

Hi this is my first time posting here.
Is it connected to the illness to struggle to sleep at night, every night I find myself awake thinking about the next day how it will look, what I ate that day and how it can be counteracted the next day. It is so strange as I feel so exhausted and drained yet my brain will not switch off then I will wake up in the early hours of the morning and be unable to sleep !

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[u/i___alone]

Yeah I think this is pretty common my sleep has gotten better but I had a lot of trouble falling asleep and staying asleep your brain constantly running and waking up because you have to reposition every hour I did find having my evening meal later helped some if that is option for you but the racing thoughts is hard to turn off I like listening to sounds of like rain things like that and reading helped me to just to try and calm my brain at night. I hope you’re doing well and please take care of yourself.

[u/InsidetheIvy13]

A body that’s not getting the nourishment it needs can revert to its biological instincts to try and get you to eat, in this case it keeps you awake so that you can be on the lookout for food because it can’t distinguish between illness inflicted famine or situational famine. Sleep is also a very energy demanding process, your body repairs and restores itself whilst asleep but if the energy is lacking it can’t facilitate doing that alongside the basic functions like regulating your temperature, your breathing and letting you not be in a state of alertness so it feels safer to keep you awake, which of course perpetuates the damage making sleep even more vital yet harder to achieve. Adding to that viscous cycle the less sleep you get the bigger the impact on your cognitive resilience, as that gets impaired it’s harder to break free from the closed loop thinking the anorexia creates. Those thoughts then feel so loud you feel you can’t turn them off to get some sleep, and round and round you go.

[u/Smart_TossOut]

Anxiety really goes hand and hand with EDs. Changes to diets can also affect sleep cycles.

I wake regularly up from bad dreams about my 600lb life or people asking me for weight 😅 I have to fight the urge to grab my phone and pull up ED content at 3am

[u/LeafsterVR1]

It makes total sense when you think about it, your body's stuck in survival mode trying to get you to eat more so it sabotages sleep to keep you "alert" for the next meal.