Episode 19: The Unhealthy Eating Habits That Disrupt Our Sleep

Show notes:

How does irregular eating become an eating disorder? And perhaps more crucially, how can we curb the unhealthy eating habits that disrupt our sleep, our well being, and our lives? To explore this link between eating disorders and sleep, we’ve invited Dr. Rene Zweig, founder and clinical director of Union Square Cognitive Therapy.

Episode-related links:

What Is Night Eating Disorder? Symptoms, Causes and Treatment
The Surprising Link Between Being a “Morning Person” and Eating Disorders
The Foods That Help You Sleep At Night

Transcript

Dr. Shelby Harris: How are you sleeping? Are you sleeping? I’m Dr. Shelby Harris, licensed clinical psychologist and Director of Sleep Health at Sleepopolis, where we dive deep into all things sleep. If you like Sleep Talking with Dr. Shelby, take a second right now to like this video on YouTube, or give us a five star rating through Spotify or Apple podcasts.

I know it seems simple, but it really does help us reach a lot more people to get them the rest they deserve. And if you’re tired of hitting that snooze button, hit the subscribe button instead. A new episode of science backed sleep tips is available every other Wednesday. When is hunger not really hunger?

How does irregular eating become an eating disorder? And perhaps more crucially, how can we curb the unhealthy eating habits that disrupt our sleep, our well being, and our lives? To explore this link between eating disorders and sleep, we’ve invited Dr. Rene Zweig, founder and clinical director of Union Square Cognitive Therapy.

Dr. Rene is a licensed clinical psychologist, certified cognitive therapist, and eating disorder specialist with 20 years experience. Utilizing cognitive behavior therapy, acceptance and commitment therapy, and mindfulness interventions, Dr. Rene provides quality care to patients coping with depression, anxiety disorders, eating disorders, body image issues, and life transitions. 

And on a personal note, she is a friend and has been for 20 ish years now, which I can’t believe. 

Dr. Rene Zweig: That’s right. 

DS: She is my go to resource for anything when it comes to eating disorders, especially. She knows her stuff. Dr. Rene, we are so glad you’re here.

Welcome to Sleep Talking with Dr. Shelby. 

DR: Thank you. It’s my pleasure to be here. 

DS: Oh, I’m so happy to have you here. So thank you. 

So generally I think when people think about eating disorders, they tend to think of the things that we’ve heard about so often over the years in the news like anorexia, bulimia, noticeable weight loss, weight gain, and just overall changes in appearance.

But that’s kind of the tip of the iceberg. So when it comes to eating disorders, there’s a lot below the surface that affect us in ways that really aren’t so obvious. So would you tell us about some of the more prevalent disorders and how they might even wreak havoc on sleep? Like what do you see? 

DR: I think you’re right. Anorexia and bulimia are probably the most thought of eating disorders and they’re also the most rare. 

DS: Yeah. 

DR: Very problematic and deadly, but quite rare. More prevalent is binge eating disorder, which affects probably at least twice as many people as anorexia or bulimia, and night eating syndrome, which is one that people rarely discuss.

So we can talk about both today. 

DS: Okay. 

DR: The two of those do wreak havoc on sleep because if you think about, with binge eating, if someone is consuming a really large quantity of food in a short period of time, which is the definition of a binge, and that’s occurring sometime in the evening, which is usually when it occurs, then they’re not going to sleep so good because that’s not just a big meal.

That is a super large quantity of food. They’re gonna be uncomfortably full, still digesting, and not get good quality sleep. 

Also, sometimes binge eating tends to push into sleep time, and therefore delays sleep, and then someone’s not getting enough sleep. So that’s a couple of things that I see.

And then the other is night eating syndrome, by definition, is eating during your sleep window, which means it’s disrupted sleep. 

DS: So, but you’re consciously aware when that’s happening. So, it’s different from like sleep related eating disorder. 

DR: Yes. So, night eating syndrome is different from the other where you are aware that you are eating during your sleep window.

So, generally what happens is after dinner, someone with night eating syndrome has a shifted eating schedule and circadian rhythm. So they’re still hungry and they eat 25 percent of their calories after dinner. 

DS: Okay. 

DR: So they’re still eating a large quantity of food. Not necessarily a binge. It might be another meal. It might be multiple snacks. Sometimes that occurs before bedtime and often it occurs in the middle of the night. And what happens is a combination of waking up hungry and then also a cognitive piece, which is I won’t be able to get back to sleep unless I’ve eaten. You know, I’m hungry. It’ll keep me awake. I won’t be able to sleep. So then they’re actually getting up and aware and choosing to eat in the middle of the night. 

DS: Okay. So what’s the difference between like binge eating- I think sometimes people don’t really fully understand what a binge is -and when is it problematic too? 

DR: Absolutely. So a binge can happen, of course, on a continuum like anything else. But people do misunderstand it. So if you eat more than you intended, if you eat, you know, a whole bag of chips, that’s not necessarily a binge. It might feel out of control. It might feel uncomfortable. It’s not necessarily a binge. 

I always think of a binge as if you called up a friend and you said, I just ate a pint of ice cream. They would say, yeah, I’ve done that. That’s not a binge. If you called up a friend and you said, I ate a pint of ice cream and a sleeve of Oreos and a bag of chips. They would say, oh. That’s a binge. 

So it’s an objectively large quantity of food in a short period of time that’s different from what other people eat in the same circumstance.

So Thanksgiving dinner, not a binge. Everybody’s doing the same thing. 

DS: And when does it, I mean, there are people who will have a binge from time to time. But when do you put the D on the end, the disorder aspect? Like when would you want to actually maybe seek help for it? 

DR: It’s always when it’s causing impairment or disruption in functioning. That’s always the definition for anything. That’s when depression is problematic. That’s when anxiety is problematic. Same thing for binge eating. 

DS: Okay. 

DR: So is it happening with enough frequency that it’s expensive? That it’s impairing your other eating? That it’s causing you a lot of distress? That it’s interfering with other activities, that it’s interfering with your health? Or your sleep?

DS: Or your sleep. So could someone have a binge eating issue as well as night eating disorder? Like you could have both? 

DR: You can have both. Yes. Having one does not mean you have the other, but you can have both. 

DS: You can. Okay. Sometimes people will have this revenge bedtime procrastination that we talk about all the time nowadays on social media.

DR: Yes. 

DS: A lot of people are stalling going to bed. And one thing I hear a lot is that people are like, well, I don’t want to go to bed. So I just sit up and I eat and I watch TV. So like, what would you say to those people who are really trying to maximize the most of the time that they have at night and just get as much in as they can?

DR: Well, I think for that kind of thing, I always like people to play it forward. So, you know, instead of how is this going to feel in the moment, which is rewarding and enjoyable. It’s how am I going to feel an hour from now the next morning when I’m exhausted? When I stayed up too late? When I ate more than I intended? When I feel uncomfortably full? That’s what we always want to do is play it forward. 

But it’s also, I like to encourage people to figure out what else can you do in that moment? So how can you enjoy relaxing? Have a quiet evening? You know, make up for kind of the stress of the day? And it doesn’t have to include food, that doesn’t have to be your go to self soothing mechanism.

DS: Okay. And how do you distinguish between hunger, and maybe like, I think a lot of people might be eating more at night, just like you said, self soothe, emotional eating. How can you tell the difference and like, what would you recommend to people who are eating more, especially at night and having those struggles?

DR: It’s a great question. I mean, the number one thing that I do with anyone, and I always find this fascinating, it’s actually what I do if someone comes to me with anorexia or bulimia or binge eating or night eating syndrome. Wants to manage their weight. What we do is start from the same place, which is let’s make sure that you’re eating every three to four hours throughout the day, starting ideally within an hour of waking up.

So you’re having breakfast, you’re having maybe a late morning snack, you’re having lunch, you’re having an afternoon snack, you’re having dinner, and maybe an evening snack. And what that does is we make sure that you’re getting in all of the food that you need and all of the nutrition that you need for the day.

We’re resetting your hunger signals and your rhythm so that we make sure that you’re eating when you’re supposed to be eating. You’re not grazing all day and eating all the time. And you’re also not going really long stretches of time without eating. And that helps us know, okay, hunger is taken care of.

So I’ve been eating my meals today. So anything left is probably not hunger unless those are very restrictive meals and snacks. It’s probably not hunger. It’s emotional. So then we could do the work of figuring out, okay, what’s going on and what can I do instead to manage these emotional triggers because it’s not physiological hunger.

DS: Okay and then emotional eating, I mean, I think there’s a bit to be said to it being normal for a lot of people. 

DR: Absolutely. We want food to be nutrition, but we also want it to be social and enjoyable. And, you know, another type of eating disorder is when your eating is only for nutrition and it’s very, very rigid and ultra clean.

And you’re not enjoying your life and you’re not enjoying food. So we don’t want it to be super tight and controlled. We want it to be enjoyable. It can be self soothing. I know you do. I love to bake. And so if I’m, you know, having something that I’ve baked gives me pleasure. We’re going to do that. I want people to do that, but I don’t want it to be that people are binging on the food that they’re eating or that they feel out of control because then they’re not really enjoying it.

Then it’s not actually pleasurable. It’s not soothing. It’s actually causing more distress. And I don’t want that. 

DS: Talk to me more about the like, ultra healthy, ultra clean, because we see a lot of that on social media too. It’s kind of like, we swing back and forth with all of it. 

DR: I know. 

DS: So talk to me, like, what is the name of that? Do you see that related to some of the binging that you might see at night or the night eating stuff? 

DR: Absolutely. So it’s known informally as orthorexia. It’s not a formal diagnostic category, but it’s still- we see it. It’s this ultra clean eating, fear of eating foods that aren’t perfect, that aren’t good foods.

It essentially means that a lot of your thinking and behavior, your time, your energy is spent restricting your food intake. And it’s under the guise of healthy eating, but it’s no longer healthy because it’s so restrictive. You may be missing nutrients, even though it’s healthy, because often it means, I don’t eat starches, I only eat clean food, which isn’t actually good for your body.

DS: Right. 

DR: But it also does backfire emotionally and cognitively. So what happens is You end up feeling deprived, not necessarily physically hungry, though maybe, but you end up feeling deprived. You’re missing out on one component of what food is about. And so you end up with cravings later. And that can come out as binging, right?

So if you’ve been super, super tight and careful all day with your eating, then by the evening, you’re worn down. You’re actually hungry. You’re deprived. And that can be a very, very common trigger for binging. 

DS: Yeah. And I think in the middle of the night too, if you’re waking up and you’re like, the only way I’m going to be able to go back to sleep is if I eat and I need to eat more of whatever food that you’ve been craving.

DR: Absolutely. 

DS: That judgment and reasoning part of your brain is literally asleep. So it’s harder to even keep that wall up that you would keep up during the day. And then you end up with more eating problems. And also it sounds like sleep problems on top of that. 

DR: Absolutely right. You’re not making your best decisions in the middle of the night. Yes, that’s correct. 

DS: Interesting. Do you notice certain, like, medications, certain things that people are doing that might be worsening some of the night eating issues or the binging? 

DR: That’s a great question. I don’t know that there’s any medications that are worsening it. There is some indication that Prozac helps with night eating syndrome.

DS: Oh, okay. 

DR: And it, it seems to be helping to re regulate the circadian rhythm. I mean, night eating syndrome, distinct from the other eating disorders, really is a circadian rhythm disorder. It’s an eating disorder, but it’s really a disorder of kind of the timing of your meal. 

So you’re not eating in the morning. You’re not hungry in the morning. You’re starting to eat later in the day and then you’re eating the bulk of your calories late in the day slash overnight. 

So there’s something about Prozac that is helping to reset that circadian rhythm. Cognitive behavioral therapy is also used. Light therapy is also used. Because we want to shift to have both more efficient sleep, so you’re not waking up and it’s disrupted and you’re feeling more rested. 

DS: Yeah. 

DR: But also, again, so that you’re eating throughout the day, not overnight. 

DS: So if someone is generally eating fine, like their diet’s fine, they’re not having any major issues, but they do have the night eating syndrome. So it’s in their conscious ish control, like people say, like, I know I’m doing it, I just can’t stop. And they’re getting enough calories during the day, like what would you say that someone like that, does in the middle of the night? Like, do they have to just get rid of all their trigger foods? Do they have to lock things up? I mean, like, if you’re not fully aware of what’s going on, like, how do you deal with it? 

DR: That’s one strategy that we use. Yes, I will say, however, that I don’t see people that are eating enough during the day and that don’t have this shifted rhythm. 

DS: Okay. 

DR: That are then eating at night. It- they really do go together. So one of the things again that we do is we start by making sure that they’re eating throughout the day, including within an hour of waking up. 

DS: Yeah. 

DR: They’re not hungry then, but that helps reset it. But yes, we also want to use what we call stimulus control, which means we control your access to things that are a trigger for you.

So we lock up food or we get them out of the house or we make them, you know, at the top back of the cabinet. So they’re not what you see and reach for when you wake up in the middle of the night or during the day, we want to have readily accessible things that are the choices that you want to be making.

So when you have in the front of your fridge or on your counter cut fruit or a healthy snack that you want to be reaching for, that helps to eliminate the scrounging for something else. 

We also use a lot of, you know, rehearsing. What are you going to say to yourself? How are you going to change your self-talk in terms of, you know, what are my other options here? What else can I do? We really want to break people’s association between waking up and feeling like I must eat to be able to fall back to sleep. We do behavioral experiments. Let’s see what happens if you, instead of eating, you meditate in bed for 10 minutes and just wait until you fall asleep.

You will eventually fall back to sleep and that will help break that association and help break that cognitive link which then will help break the night eating syndrome. 

DS: Behavioral experiments, people don’t talk about them enough I don’t think. Like I do them a lot with my sleep patients, my insomnia patients.

DR: They’re my favorite. 

DS: For listeners, behavioral experiment is really where if you have a preconceived notion of something, this is the truth, right, we will do an experiment. It could be a week long, it could be a few days long. And then I’m a big fan of tracking it on a diary, sleep diary that I use, whatever you’re going to use to see the evidence behind your belief.

So a good example of like what you’re talking about is like meditate in bed, you could do that for a few days and see if that makes any difference. Like caffeine, I do behavioral experiments with no caffeine versus caffeine and see if that makes a difference. That you’re not necessarily negating what you believe. You’re just seeing, okay, let’s just see if there’s any other way to deal with it. So behavioral experience. I really do love that. 

DR: I do too. 

DS: What about, the thing that I grapple with a lot with people who have more of the night eating issue is that idea of like, lock the foods up, don’t have certain things that might be trigger foods in the middle of the night.

But there’s also the movement, understandably so, with all foods fit. 

DR: Absolutely. 

DS: Right? And during the day for people who are very restrictive or have the binge eating episodes and are very thoughtful about good and bad foods to say, no, there’s no such thing as good and bad food. So how do you deal with that? Because in one way you’re giving one signal during the day, but then you’re giving another signal. And I always, I struggle with that. 

DR: I love this question because I think it’s one of the nuanced things in the eating disorders field right now is, you know, we want intuitive eating. We want all foods fit. No food is good or bad. Everything has its place. What I always come back to is that we want people, like I said, eating these foods and actually paying attention to eating them with intention, enjoying that they’re eating them. So that does require some kind of retraining, almost, for people. So what I often do is think about, okay, let’s take the chocolate cake, for example.

We want you to be able to eat that, but let’s start training you to have it in your diet in a way that feels good, intentional, under control, so that it’s not turning into a binge or it’s not night eating. It’s instead with intention and with satisfaction. 

So what I often will ask people to do is, let’s plan ahead, on Tuesday with your lunch, you’re going to get your usual lunch and you’re also going to get a piece of chocolate cake. And you’re going to have them together. 

And then you know what you’re going to do after lunch, go back to work, whatever it is, and you’re not going to have any more chocolate cake. So it’s not going to turn into a binge, because you had one slice. You enjoyed it, you ate it, you gave yourself permission to have it, and then you went on with your day.

And with some repetition that helps people break this association between that’s a bad food, I’ve blown it, now it spirals into a binge. And it also underscores every food can fit. It can be enjoyable. We just have to set you up to do it in a way that you’re going to be successful. 

DS: Yeah. I think that that’s definitely a big thing that I hear people say nowadays, like, well, why would I have to lock it up if it’s all okay?

Well, it’s a little bit harder. And I think the one other thing to stress to listeners too is that there’s the idea of, like we had mentioned initially, there’s the night eating syndrome where you’re eating more in the middle of the night and it’s within somewhat conscious control, even though you’re kind of half asleep.

And then there’s sleep related eating, which is really a form of sleepwalking disorder. It’s where you’re eating in the middle of the night and you have no idea it’s happening. A lot of times people, I don’t know if you see this at all in your practice, but patients will come to me and report like, oh, I found, I’m just thinking of different things I’ve heard over the years.

Like I found scattered peas around my bed or I found that like, and it’s kind of haphazard too when it’s happening because you’re sleepwalking. 

And the other thing that a lot of people with sleep related eating issues can have is they’re eating inedible substances. So I’ll have people eating coffee grounds, Ajax, things like that.

And one of the biggest things that, at least in my practice, can worsen these things or cause them to happen would be medications. So a lot of the sleep aids can make some of this sleep eating stuff happen and that’s when people come to me often because they need to get off of them. So if that’s happening to you or you’re waking up and you’re not hungry at all and you have no idea why, that might be happening in the middle of the night. So definitely bring that up with your doctor. 

DR: And as you said, there’s usually some clues that that has been happening. There’s food missing or there’s wrappers laying around. Yes. 

DS: I could write a book with all the stories of like the sleep eating things that people have sadly tried to eat in the middle of the night. It can be really dangerous for some people, so it definitely needs to be addressed. Or if you’re gaining weight and you have no idea why, that’s often another big clue. 

So with all of the kind of eating issues that we’ve talked about, what would you suggest for someone listening who might notice some of the behaviors themselves? Like how would they know if it’s say anorexia versus bulimia versus binge eating and where would they go for help or when would they really start to need help? 

DR: Well, I think a lot of times people are able to make some changes on their own. There’s some really good self help books. I always recommend that people consult the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies, ABCT.

That’s a really good organization that has fact sheets and information for consumers, for professionals, on cognitive behavioral therapy and different disorders, including eating disorders. So that can be a good way of checking in. Do I have any of these symptoms? Does this meet criteria for something, without consulting with a professional. 

That’s also a possibility if it feels like I’ve been wrestling with this and I’m not making progress or it’s getting worse or people around me are concerned. That’s a really good way to address it. 

DS: You said there are some books that you like, we’ll put them in the show notes also, but what books do you particularly love?

DR: For binge eating, my go to is Chris Fairburn’s Overcoming Binge Eating. It’s the classic, it’s been around forever, there’s a second edition, it’s, it’s fantastic. I think that does a really good job of walking people through what’s happening with binge eating. How, you know, restriction and food rules all contribute to binge eating. The things that we just talked about very briefly.

DS: Yeah. 

DR: And then what we do to reverse it and to get it back under control. So that’s always a recommendation. That’s also good for bulimia, by the way. And then there are not as many good books for anorexia, that tends to be, for lack of a better word, a really sticky disorder. That’s hard to self help for that. That’s when you really need to consult a professional. 

DS: Okay. And what would be the diagnostic difference between, sometimes like a binge eating episode disorder, versus say bulimia. 

DR: Well, the classic difference between the two is with bulimia, you have some kind of compensatory behavior. So you have vomiting or laxative use or overexercise to offset the binge.

DS: Okay. So there’s a binge in both a lot of times, but then there’s some sort of compensatory mechanism. Okay. 

DR: Exactly. 

DS: So if any of these things are happening, though, it’s definitely something that needs to be addressed sooner than later. 

DR: Absolutely. They dramatically affect your physical health. They all have pretty serious consequences physically. In fact, eating disorders are some of the most fatal of the mental diagnoses, and they certainly cause psychological distress and impairment in

 your social life and your functioning and maybe your work life and how well you concentrate and your anxiety.

DS: Yeah. 

DR: Absolutely. 

DS: Are there any new treatments besides CBT and like any new medications, anything on the market that you’re starting to see that’s really promising? 

DR: Most recently the biggest thing Most innovations in eating disorders treatment have been family based therapy, which is the first line treatment of choice now for adolescents and young adults with anorexia or bulimia.

DS: Okay. 

DR: That’s a way of including the family in accountability and refeeding and restabilizing health. And it’s much more effective than anything else we’ve seen before when there was a real loss of good options for anorexia. 

And the other is incorporating, and I do this myself. a lot of acceptance and commitment therapy into CBT. So we’re still changing thoughts and behaviors, but we’re also doing a lot of work of accepting what my natural body size is, or what I can and cannot control, or what my vulnerabilities are. And maybe some of these thoughts are going to stick around for a very long time, but I’m going to do my best at managing my life and having a meaningful life in spite of these thoughts. So I’m no longer acting on them, but they’re still there. 

DS: You were talking earlier about kind of having a routine eating schedule to help kind of offset some of the nighttime food, like urges, everything. The reality though is we live in today’s world, which is not exactly, I mean, you and I both know this, like we’re going back to back to back with patients that I’m lucky sometimes to get a protein bar in.

DR: Yes. 

DS: So how would you recommend to someone if they’re so busy all the time to like sit down and have three square meals and then snacks built in like, how do you, if you just get caught up in the day, of course you’re going to be hungrier at night. So how do you deal with that? 

DR: Well, I think twofold. One is we’re always trying to figure out what you can actually do and prioritize, right? So it is very easy to have a day where you don’t have time to eat, but that’s going to have consequences. So is there any way that we can adjust that? 

I myself might break up my lunch on really busy days where, you know, when I have five minutes between patients, I’m having one part of it between one patient and one part of it between the next and one part of it between the next. And eventually I get in that lunch, but I am getting it in. 

Sometimes, people though, are blowing through their meal on purpose because they almost think a calorie saved is a calorie saved, but it doesn’t, it backfires later. 

DS: That makes a lot of sense. And even like things like smoothies, like that’s sometimes like the trick. Some of my patients- 

DR: Absolutely. 

DS: -might not necessarily know. But I’ll have it in my Yeti just to like kind of have that nutrition because I, I don’t know. I just get so hungry by the end of the day if I’m not eating. Okay. That makes a lot of sense. So is there anything that you’ve seen throughout your career with regards to eating disorders and sleep especially that you think would surprise some people?

DR: I think the biggest thing is what we started with, which is that the most common eating disorder is not anorexia or bulimia, it’s actually binge eating. 

DS: Yeah. 

DR: And that does have an impact on every area of your life, including how you feel about yourself. 

DS: Yeah. 

DR: It’s also done in secret, so there’s a lot of shame associated with it, which also means it’s often done late at night, by yourself, and it’s cutting into sleep.

DS: Why do you think binge eating, if it’s the most, one of the most common eating disorders, why do you think we don’t talk about it enough in our society? 

DR: I think it’s seen as a shameful thing that someone is out of control, lacks willpower. It’s absolutely not, but it’s often seen that way. You know, people are reluctant to admit I’m struggling with this, I’m eating large quantities of food because they feel ashamed of it.

DS: Makes a lot of sense. So what do you think people also maybe misunderstand or forget to take into account the most when it comes to eating disorders, besides binge eating being an issue, but what do they tend to not even take into account? 

DR: I think the biggest thing is that underlying every eating disorder is anxiety. Anxiety about being in control or uncertainty. I’m not sure that everyone would agree with this, but this is what I see, is that I’ve never seen someone with an eating disorder, across the board, that doesn’t also have anxiety because people with anxiety like predictability and control and to manage their world and not like uncertainty. I ultimately think that’s what an eating disorder is.

It’s also a biological and genetically based disorder. Don’t get me wrong. But there is a lot of trying to control what you can’t control and a lot of poor distress tolerance. 

DS: Yeah. And I think that’s interesting what you’re saying about control, because that’s what I talk about a lot with insomnia, right? I think insomnia can happen to anyone, but I see it a lot, I mean, we work in New York City. I see it a lot with people who are very high achieving, and there’s this sense of control, like, what can I control in my life? Eating, food intake. And I think with insomnia, it’s the opposite, right? The anxiety happens a lot because they feel like they should be able to control something that they can’t. So then you try to over control your sleep, which then backfires. That’s at the root of a lot of these issues, control. 

DR: I agree. Yes. 

DS: And that’s where acceptance, you were talking about acceptance and commitment therapy, can you just briefly just talk to people about just a general overview of what that is, how that’s different from CBT?

DR: Absolutely. So when we think about CBT, I mean, very broadly, we’re talking about changing thoughts and behaviors. And also very broadly with acceptance and commitment therapy, we’re talking about we can’t change our thoughts, our thoughts are just firings in our brain. So we want to feel sort of less attached to them and believe those thoughts less and therefore act on them less.

So the premise of acceptance and commitment therapy is we all have difficulties, vulnerabilities, tough situations, you know, mental health issues, negative thoughts, whatever it is, just because it’s there doesn’t mean we have to act consistent with it. So just because I’m afraid of giving a presentation doesn’t mean that I’m going to avoid it.

I’m going to do it because that’s consistent with the life that I want to be living. That’s acceptance and commitment therapy. 

DS: Right. And the more you try to control it, the more it’s going to backfire. 

DR: And acceptance and commitment therapy involves a lot of behavioral experiments like we talked about where you’re- 

DS: Where you’re trying to see what happens, and then actually just accepting that you can’t always control it.

DR: Exactly. 

DS: So talk to me about intermittent fasting, when we’re talking about eating routinely throughout the day and regularly. What are your thoughts about it? And do you find that for some people it’s worsening some of the night eating stuff? 

DR: Oh, yes. Intermittent fasting is a great question. Very big buzzword now.

DS: Yeah. 

DR: Not my favorite thing It does work for some people and then by all means, then if it’s not causing any problems for you, I have no issues with it. But what I do see is that a lot of people think I should be doing this and it would be helping and it’s not working for them. And so they’re not eating after 6 p. m at night or 7 p. m at night and they’re trying not to eat until 10 or 11 or 12 the next morning. 

And what ends up happening is then, of course their eating is all compressed into a short window of time, that’s what they’re striving for. But it backfires, they’re not satisfied, their blood sugars are dropping, and they’re ending up binging and then thinking, I shouldn’t be hungry because I’ve eaten and I should be able to do this intermittent fasting.

And then they, that’s where the shame piece comes in is thinking, I should be able to do this, but I’m not. 

DS: So if it works for you, fine. But if you’re noticing you’re struggling, you’re hungry, and you’re eating more at nights, then maybe think about a different method. Okay.

DR: Absolutely. Absolutely. 

DS: So, we end each episode with a segment that we like to call Something to Sleep On. So one last thing you’d like to share with anyone looking to change their sleep habits, maybe even their eating habits, eating disorder, anything. So when it comes to eating disorders and sleep, do you have one final thought for our listeners, maybe something to sleep on? 

DR: My biggest takeaway I hope for everyone is the importance of eating regularly throughout the day. That cannot be understated how important that is. And that even though we’re talking about starting with breakfast, it has a really big impact then on what happens later in the day. And if you want a chance of being able to not binge, not do night eating, go to bed on time, you really do need to start by setting the groundwork early in the day by eating enough and fueling your body.

DS: Dr. Rene, thank you, friend, so much for being here. 

DR: It was my pleasure. This was a lot of fun. Thanks for having me. 

DS: It was a lot of fun having you. The work you’re doing is really so relevant and I absolutely love digging into this with you and really listeners, please check out her practice. She really is one of the experts on eating disorders. I absolutely love going to her for all this knowledge. So thank you again for being here. 

DR: Thank you. 

DS: Thank you for listening to sleep talking with Dr. Shelby, a sleepopolis original podcast. Remember, if you’re tired of hitting the snooze button, make sure to hit that subscribe button right now on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you are listening.

And for even more sleep tips, visit sleepopolis.com and my Instagram page @sleepdocshelby. 

Today’s episode was produced by Ready Freddy Media. Our Senior Director of Content is Alanna Nuñez. Our Head of Content is Molly Stout and I’m Dr. Shelby Harris. 

Until next time, sleep well.