very scared about sleep binge

GretaGirl8
GretaGirl8 Posts: 274 Member
edited November 15 in Health and Weight Loss
I woke up this morning to discover I ate an entire large pizza (from a pizza shop). My family had eaten the other large pizza the night before and the remainder pizza was in the refrigerator. I also ate 4 normal size powdered cake donuts. I have no recollection of this. I suspect ambien (which I will be discussing with my psychiatrist). Right now I am so scared. I can't image the calories I consumed. How will this affect my weight? Let's assume it was 5000 calories.

Replies

  • Sabine_Stroehm
    Sabine_Stroehm Posts: 19,263 Member
    It will cause the scale to go up. And then you'll get it to move down.
    I BET it's the ambien. There are LOTS of reports of sleep eating, sleep texting, sleep sex, sleep DRIVING. You name it.
    Discuss another option with your doctor. If you did it once, I'm willing to bet you'll do it again. Maybe even sleep cooking, which would be dangerous, obviously.

    To me, getting to the root of it is more important than how many one-time calories you ingested. Good luck!
  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,865 Member
    Sabine_Stroehm wrote: »
    It will cause the scale to go up. And then you'll get it to move down.
    I BET it's the ambien. There are LOTS of reports of sleep eating, sleep texting, sleep sex, sleep DRIVING. You name it.
    Discuss another option with your doctor. If you did it once, I'm willing to bet you'll do it again. Maybe even sleep cooking, which would be dangerous, obviously.

    To me, getting to the root of it is more important than how many one-time calories you ingested. Good luck!

  • GretaGirl8
    GretaGirl8 Posts: 274 Member
    I agree it is very important to get to the root of the problem. And I am. But right now I am freaking out about the weight.
  • mburgess458
    mburgess458 Posts: 480 Member
    I would definitely bet it was the ambien. Google it, there are tons of reports. Personally I have a friend who would prepare and eat an entire second dinner and not remember a thing...she would have long phone conversations and not remember a thing too. When she was on it my wife and I had sleep sex a couple of times before we realized it. When I was on it I woke up in the basement a few times with no memory of how I got there.

    If you need a sleeping pill there are tons of them out there that don't have that side effect. My sleep eating friend switched to trazodone and loves it.
  • PeachyPlum
    PeachyPlum Posts: 1,243 Member
    Ambien will do that to you.

    I never specifically sleep-binged, but I would get into bed, start feeling sleepy, and suddenly think that a snack was a really great idea. I'd wake up the next morning with a package random food (crackers, dried cranberries, chips) on the nightstand or in the bed next to me. I would remember "Oh yeah, this seemed like a really great idea last night :neutral_face: "

    I'd definitely talk to your doc and see if there's another medication you can switch to. If you're sleep-walking to the fridge, it's possible you'd try to drive or otherwise do something dangerous without realizing.

    If we assume it was 5000 calories, worst case you might gain up to 1.5 pounds. (Based on a 250 calorie surplus resulting in a 0.5 pound per week weight gain). You obviously don't want to do that every night, but I wouldn't panic too much about the damage from last night. Just get the medication adjusted or make a plan to avoid doing it again in the future.
  • GretaGirl8
    GretaGirl8 Posts: 274 Member
    this is absolutely mortifying...yes, because of the ambien...but also it takes me a long time to lose 1.5 pounds. I can't believe I gained it back in a day.
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  • mburgess458
    mburgess458 Posts: 480 Member
    thecunninglinguist wrote: »
    is there some way you can stop yourself from getting out of your room when you sleepwalk? like locking your door, or even tying something like a string to your toe so it wakes you up if you get out of bed

    dont worry about this one particular instance, just prevent it from happening again

    Stopping the ambien is the safest way to prevent it from happening again. In my experience people on ambien can do anything they can when awake so unless you have yourself locked up such that you can't possibly get out on your own it won't work....and that's just not safe (like if there was a fire or other emergency).
  • GretaGirl8
    GretaGirl8 Posts: 274 Member
    understood on the ambien front. it isn't that I am downplaying the sleep eating...but right now I am still in shock the amount of food I ate (both calories and volume.)
  • TimothyFish
    TimothyFish Posts: 4,925 Member
    Assuming it was 5000 calories, that's less than a two pound weight gain. The calories are what they are. As for the sleep walking, have you tried using Benadryl?
  • LITtlerMeCO
    LITtlerMeCO Posts: 130 Member
    I have a friend who was taking Ambien for a while and slept-ate almost every night. Her husband got tired of her accusing him of leaving dirty dishes around the house so he started recording her. He also had to hide her keys every night because he caught her trying to go for a drive.
  • 50452
    50452 Posts: 170 Member
    I did some whack-a-doodle stuff when I took Ambien; including sleep-eating. My best friend woke up one morning and found a six-pack of beer and two packs of cigarettes on the dining room table. She figured out later that she had driven to the store on Ambien.

    I won't take Ambien anymore. I'm not advising you to not take it; that is between you and your doctor. Be glad that you didn't get in your car and drive somewhere or walk out into traffic. Definitely talk to your doctor about your amnesiac episodes, though.
  • 4bettermenow
    4bettermenow Posts: 166 Member
    Holy moly! If that happened to me (I've never had ambien), what I ate would be the least of my worries! That is just scary...to not remember doing stuff including driving somewhere...I just can't even imagine.
  • PeachyPlum
    PeachyPlum Posts: 1,243 Member
    GretaGirl8 wrote: »
    understood on the ambien front. it isn't that I am downplaying the sleep eating...but right now I am still in shock the amount of food I ate (both calories and volume.)

    What's done is done. There is no point stressing out about something that happened in the past, all you can do is move forward from here.

    I'm a big believer that things happen for a reason. If I was guessing, I would say this was a message from the universe about how Ambien might be dangerous for you.

    Can you reframe this in your mind a bit? Take a deep breath, say a quick thank you for the warning, learn from it, and move forward.
  • Sophsmother
    Sophsmother Posts: 83 Member
    When I was on Ambien, I left my house and went to my new next door neighbor's house and banged on the door looking for food. I woke up in the hospital the next morning with NO memory of anything. Luckily, my daughter was out for the night so she wasn't left alone. And my neighbors had a sense of humor about it. I never took Ambien again.

    The scale will go up for sure, but it will come back down. Just give it some time. But I'd be more worried about the ambien. How long have you been on it? Talk to your doc.
  • 50452
    50452 Posts: 170 Member
    Sophsmother wrote: »
    When I was on Ambien, I left my house and went to my new next door neighbor's house and banged on the door looking for food. I woke up in the hospital the next morning with NO memory of anything. Luckily, my daughter was out for the night so she wasn't left alone. And my neighbors had a sense of humor about it. I never took Ambien again.

    The scale will go up for sure, but it will come back down. Just give it some time. But I'd be more worried about the ambien. How long have you been on it? Talk to your doc.

    This could have been horribly tragic, but since it wasn't, I got a visual of what this must have looked like and I'm still still laughing. I can just picture the flummoxed look your neighbors must have had on their faces.


  • GretaGirl8
    GretaGirl8 Posts: 274 Member
    thank you for the replies. I have been on ambien for over three years consistently. I have experienced some minor sleep eating before...but it was more like I went to bed with a snack and got up and grabbed some more and didn't remember getting more. I never experienced the sleep texts or calls and certainly not driving. I wonder if another piece of the story is relevant. I have been restricting my intake pretty heavily lately. Is it possible my body decided to override my head and succumb to a binge?
  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,865 Member
    GretaGirl8 wrote: »
    this is absolutely mortifying...yes, because of the ambien...but also it takes me a long time to lose 1.5 pounds. I can't believe I gained it back in a day.

    Anything you gained in a day is due to more inherent waste in your system, water retention, and topping off your glycogen stores. Even if you over-eat substantially, you don't put on fat that fast. Your body doesn't work like that.
  • GretaGirl8
    GretaGirl8 Posts: 274 Member
    cwolfman13 wrote: »
    GretaGirl8 wrote: »
    this is absolutely mortifying...yes, because of the ambien...but also it takes me a long time to lose 1.5 pounds. I can't believe I gained it back in a day.

    Anything you gained in a day is due to more inherent waste in your system, water retention, and topping off your glycogen stores. Even if you over-eat substantially, you don't put on fat that fast. Your body doesn't work like that.

    thank you for this bit of hope.
  • GretaGirl8
    GretaGirl8 Posts: 274 Member
    cwolfman13...can you elaborate on your comment?
This discussion has been closed.

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