Hello my dear friends :flowerforyou:

I don't know if anyone can 'help' me actually, but maybe someone experienced similar things I did, so I decided to make this thread.
I am in recovery of an eating disorder, bulimia nervosa. And in general, I'm doing quite fine.
I'm in therapy and it is really helpful. My therapist helped me to identify several behaviours and made me help how to see when I start supressing feelings or trying to cope them with food.
I've had several weeks without a binge which was "directly" triggered through a stressful situation (which were dominant in the last months and years of my ED).

Anyway, those relapses still happen. And in general that's okay, I know it's part of the progress etc.

But what really frustrates me is the following: I started binge-eating at night again.

I experienced this already in earlier stages, which was caused through not eating enough, skipping too many meals, generally a stressful relationship to food, I guess.
But I simply have no clue why it is happening right now! The last few weeks, it happened nearly every night.

I start feeling the urge to binge in the evening. No matter how much I ate during the day, no matter how big my dinner was. I am eating enough, so that shouldn't be it (my therapist reads my food journal and agreed that I'm eating enough, so it's not just my opinion). And I cannot always identify whether it's hunger or appetite.
If I get huge cravings until midnight, I'm mostly able to either identify it as hunger and eat something, or identify it as appetite and try to distract myself. This works.. sometimes, at least.

But it's frustrating to know that even if I make it through the evening, I'll mostly blow up in the night. I go to sleep and after a few hours, I wake up and I simply need to eat. I am awake, I'm not sleep- walking, but I'm not questioning the act/the urge, I just go to the kitchen and eat. Sometimes, several times during the night.
I eat mostly stuff I also eat during binges. Bread, oatmeal, chocolate, cheese. So, fat and carbs.

I'm not cutting out certain foods anymore, I try to not restrict myself of anything and I found it really helpful,l it reduces my cravings a lot.

Still, it simply annoys me. I destroy all the work I'm doing during the day. I have no idea how to analyze this problem. I even tried to lock myself in my room during the night, but didn't really help.
I'm currently not working, I'm waiting to start studying in September. I'm planning to structure my days more in the future, eat more regularly again (I eat enough but I used to have a better structure, so there's not too much and not too little time between the meals etc.)
I don't feel unhappy and I handle criticism/conflicts much better now, so I'm not so sure how to handle this. During the day, I can try to use coping mechanisms, but that doesn't work when it happens at night.

My therapist, as great as she is, can't help here unfortunately. I simply have to work it out somehow.
Does anyone here know these urges to binge at night? If yes, how do you handle it? I'm happy for any input, no matter if it helps in my own situation, I just want to learn more about it.

Lots of love my dear :flowerforyou:
~Nen