Gaining Weight Due to Severe Chronic Insomnia
MichelleLea122
Posts: 332 Member
So for the past few months, I've really been struggling with severe chronic insomnia. I am on a sleep medication, but it has pretty much stopped working for me. I am working with my doctor to find a solution, but he's pretty unhelpful.
To put it perspective the past week has looked like
Monday: 7:30am - 1:00pm (4.5 hrs)
Tuesday: 2:00am- 4:00am; 6:00am-7:00am (3 hrs)
Wednesday 4:00am- 11:00am (7 hrs)
Thursday 5:00am - 7:30am: 9:30am- 12:00 (5 hrs)
Friday 2:30 am- 4:00am; 11:00am - 2:00pm (4.5 hrs)
Saturday 12:00am - 2:00am (2 hrs and counting)
TLDR I often can't fall asleep until past the sunrises, and if I do, I can't sleep more than 2 consecutive hours without waking up periodically throughout the night. Because of my sleeping issues I am steadily gaining weight.
Since I am awake a majority of the time, I often find myself genuinely hungry ALL THE TIME. To compensate for the lack of sleep, my body feels the need to shovel a constant stream of calories at all times. Although I try to portion my calories accordingly, I never 'plan' to have a meal at like 4:30 in the morning, but it ends up happening anyways if I'm awake and hungry.
It really is minimal weight gain, but I feel terrible about it, because it feels like it's beyond my control. I'm not really sure what I was trying to accomplish with this post, but I was just sick and frustrated and felt the need to vent a bit.
To put it perspective the past week has looked like
Monday: 7:30am - 1:00pm (4.5 hrs)
Tuesday: 2:00am- 4:00am; 6:00am-7:00am (3 hrs)
Wednesday 4:00am- 11:00am (7 hrs)
Thursday 5:00am - 7:30am: 9:30am- 12:00 (5 hrs)
Friday 2:30 am- 4:00am; 11:00am - 2:00pm (4.5 hrs)
Saturday 12:00am - 2:00am (2 hrs and counting)
TLDR I often can't fall asleep until past the sunrises, and if I do, I can't sleep more than 2 consecutive hours without waking up periodically throughout the night. Because of my sleeping issues I am steadily gaining weight.
Since I am awake a majority of the time, I often find myself genuinely hungry ALL THE TIME. To compensate for the lack of sleep, my body feels the need to shovel a constant stream of calories at all times. Although I try to portion my calories accordingly, I never 'plan' to have a meal at like 4:30 in the morning, but it ends up happening anyways if I'm awake and hungry.
It really is minimal weight gain, but I feel terrible about it, because it feels like it's beyond my control. I'm not really sure what I was trying to accomplish with this post, but I was just sick and frustrated and felt the need to vent a bit.
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Replies
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Have you tried drinking warm milk, taking warm bath, listening to music, having a massage, exercising, etc. before bed?
Do you feel depressed?1 -
From what I'm reading it seems like you spend just about the entire day and night in bed, trying to sleep. That is not going to help, at all. Do you work, if so what hours? If not, take at least a week and do this -Get out of bed at say 7am, stay out of bed until at least say 9pm, no matter how tired you feel. Be active, all day long, get out of the house, go for walks, go to the gym, go for a swim, anything to tire you out physically. Make batches of meals to freeze so that you have pre-portioned food so you know what you can eat. What are you thinking about when you are not sleeping? Write it down, do something about it if you can, if you feel depressed, tell your doctor, get medication to help. If you are thinking about all the things you need to do, write a list then you know you won't forget to do them. Just the act of writing things down can help to stop them going round and round in your head.
Best of luck, insomnia is not fun. If it's any help, I haven't had more than 2 hours sleep on the trot for as long as I can remember and I rarely get more than a total of 5 hours a night, so I truly understand where you are at at the moment.2 -
From what I'm reading it seems like you spend just about the entire day and night in bed, trying to sleep. That is not going to help, at all. Do you work, if so what hours? If not, take at least a week and do this -Get out of bed at say 7am, stay out of bed until at least say 9pm, no matter how tired you feel. Be active, all day long, get out of the house, go for walks, go to the gym, go for a swim, anything to tire you out physically. Make batches of meals to freeze so that you have pre-portioned food so you know what you can eat. What are you thinking about when you are not sleeping? Write it down, do something about it if you can, if you feel depressed, tell your doctor, get medication to help. If you are thinking about all the things you need to do, write a list then you know you won't forget to do them. Just the act of writing things down can help to stop them going round and round in your head.
Best of luck, insomnia is not fun. If it's any help, I haven't had more than 2 hours sleep on the trot for as long as I can remember and I rarely get more than a total of 5 hours a night, so I truly understand where you are at at the moment.
I don't really spend the entire day and night trying to sleep. I'm actually quite busy of a person. I'm a graduate student in the field of mathematics, researcher, and a part time tutor. Most of the graduate and researcher work is independent study, although I have night time classes a couple of times a week. The tutoring job is also after school hours, so that's why I can sleep until 2 if needed. As for the physical activity, I'm extremely active (borderline too active). I do over an hour of intense strength training a day , in addition to an hour of cardio.
Oddly enough I'm not really 'thinking' of anything when I can't sleep. It's just my body refuses to relax to the point of sleep, or wakes itself up after two hours (despite the fact that I clearly needed more). I know the root cause of my insomnia is just really intense anxiety. The only problem is my anxiety stems from who I am as a person, rather than external circumstances. I'm an extremely high achieving, slightly ocd, perfectionist. While I hate my anxiety and recognize I need better coping mechanisms, I can't help but think about how my anxiety has allowed me to achieve so much at such a young age.0 -
MichelleLei1 wrote: »From what I'm reading it seems like you spend just about the entire day and night in bed, trying to sleep. That is not going to help, at all. Do you work, if so what hours? If not, take at least a week and do this -Get out of bed at say 7am, stay out of bed until at least say 9pm, no matter how tired you feel. Be active, all day long, get out of the house, go for walks, go to the gym, go for a swim, anything to tire you out physically. Make batches of meals to freeze so that you have pre-portioned food so you know what you can eat. What are you thinking about when you are not sleeping? Write it down, do something about it if you can, if you feel depressed, tell your doctor, get medication to help. If you are thinking about all the things you need to do, write a list then you know you won't forget to do them. Just the act of writing things down can help to stop them going round and round in your head.
Best of luck, insomnia is not fun. If it's any help, I haven't had more than 2 hours sleep on the trot for as long as I can remember and I rarely get more than a total of 5 hours a night, so I truly understand where you are at at the moment.
I don't really spend the entire day and night trying to sleep. I'm actually quite busy of a person. I'm a graduate student in the field of mathematics, researcher, and a part time tutor. Most of the graduate and researcher work is independent study, although I have night time classes a couple of times a week. The tutoring job is also after school hours, so that's why I can sleep until 2 if needed. As for the physical activity, I'm extremely active (borderline too active). I do over an hour of intense strength training a day , in addition to an hour of cardio.
Oddly enough I'm not really 'thinking' of anything when I can't sleep. It's just my body refuses to relax to the point of sleep, or wakes itself up after two hours (despite the fact that I clearly needed more). I know the root cause of my insomnia is just really intense anxiety. The only problem is my anxiety stems from who I am as a person, rather than external circumstances. I'm an extremely high achieving, slightly ocd, perfectionist. While I hate my anxiety and recognize I need better coping mechanisms, I can't help but think about how my anxiety has allowed me to achieve so much at such a young age.
Your body clock is still screwed up, unless the night classes are literally in the middle of the night, you need to be teaching your mind and body that day time is for being awake and night time is for sleeping. You need to teach yourself a routine, just like you would with a baby. Get up at the same time every day, do your studying, tutoring, researching and achieving and then night time go to bed. Do NOT sleep during the day, your body and mind have no clue what they should be doing, you say you are a high achiever so are clearly very intelligent, think about it.
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I'm also dealing with insomnia, not as bad as the OP, but still an issue. Maybe the more knowledgeable folks here can shed more light on it, but I stumbled across an article about serotonin deficiencies that nails about 80% of the symptoms I'm dealing with.
http://bebrainfit.com/serotonin-deficiency/
Now, I am not a health professional, but so far this, and the "fix" that seems to be helping me, which is adding vitamins B complex and D3 to my daily supplements "seems" to be helping. I've been taking them for about a week now, and each night my sleep seems deeper and longer, and my mood has certainly improved, dramatically according to my wife
Your mileage may vary of course. I hope this helps some.
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MichelleLei1 wrote: »From what I'm reading it seems like you spend just about the entire day and night in bed, trying to sleep. That is not going to help, at all. Do you work, if so what hours? If not, take at least a week and do this -Get out of bed at say 7am, stay out of bed until at least say 9pm, no matter how tired you feel. Be active, all day long, get out of the house, go for walks, go to the gym, go for a swim, anything to tire you out physically. Make batches of meals to freeze so that you have pre-portioned food so you know what you can eat. What are you thinking about when you are not sleeping? Write it down, do something about it if you can, if you feel depressed, tell your doctor, get medication to help. If you are thinking about all the things you need to do, write a list then you know you won't forget to do them. Just the act of writing things down can help to stop them going round and round in your head.
Best of luck, insomnia is not fun. If it's any help, I haven't had more than 2 hours sleep on the trot for as long as I can remember and I rarely get more than a total of 5 hours a night, so I truly understand where you are at at the moment.
I don't really spend the entire day and night trying to sleep. I'm actually quite busy of a person. I'm a graduate student in the field of mathematics, researcher, and a part time tutor. Most of the graduate and researcher work is independent study, although I have night time classes a couple of times a week. The tutoring job is also after school hours, so that's why I can sleep until 2 if needed. As for the physical activity, I'm extremely active (borderline too active). I do over an hour of intense strength training a day , in addition to an hour of cardio.
Oddly enough I'm not really 'thinking' of anything when I can't sleep. It's just my body refuses to relax to the point of sleep, or wakes itself up after two hours (despite the fact that I clearly needed more). I know the root cause of my insomnia is just really intense anxiety. The only problem is my anxiety stems from who I am as a person, rather than external circumstances. I'm an extremely high achieving, slightly ocd, perfectionist. While I hate my anxiety and recognize I need better coping mechanisms, I can't help but think about how my anxiety has allowed me to achieve so much at such a young age.
Your body clock is still screwed up, unless the night classes are literally in the middle of the night, you need to be teaching your mind and body that day time is for being awake and night time is for sleeping. You need to teach yourself a routine, just like you would with a baby. Get up at the same time every day, do your studying, tutoring, researching and achieving and then night time go to bed. Do NOT sleep during the day, your body and mind have no clue what they should be doing, you say you are a high achiever so are clearly very intelligent, think about it.
The problem is I try to sleep whenever I can in order to mildly function during the day. I've tried 'resetting' my circadian rhythm, but my body is highly resilient. There's at least one day a week I'm up for 24 hours, I've even had instances where I've been awake for 30 straight hours. And yes I'm working with a doctor, on addressing the actual sleep issues, I'd just like to address the appetite that is associated with my insomnia.0 -
I know this well!!! I think keeling to as much a regular schedule as possible is important. I think you might also be doing too much in terms of exercise and in general are just "on the go!" Too much. See if giving yourself an hour before bed to try meditating, taking a bath, a slow short reflective walk outside in cool night air doesn't help some.0
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If your doc is unhelpful, switch docs!
Can your university health center refer you to someone? Preferably someone with experience in brain chemistry? At the very least you need to have a doc who will help you find out if the insomnia is caused by anxiety, the anxiety is caused by insomnia, or something like sleep apnea or ocd is just making everything worse.
You can try doing research in your school's medical library too, just to give you ideas to discuss with your doc - and don't forget trying out a psychiatrist or psychologist too - if they don't find an easy fix, cognitive behavioral therapy could help. People with OCD and/or depression do have higher rates of insomnia than the general population.
As to the appetite thing, when I was starving due to lack of sleep, I tested what made me feel best to eat. For me it was high protein or fat. So, I'd pre-portion a reasonable amount of something to eat at whatever ungodly hour I was awake and staring at the ceiling. Cheese and crackers, hummus and whole wheat pita, greek yogurt with cocoa powder and some banana, peanut butter and veggies, anything I could pre-measure and stick in a tupperware in the fridge. That way I would eat without mindless grazing on things that would not actually make me feel satiated.0 -
Melotonin and hypnosis gets me 5 hours. Thats better than nothing. Im active all day too but my issue is anxiety and bad dreams. Can't hurt to give that a try though. I take 5mg, my children take the same and went from no sleep to a lil sleep with that alone. They have disorders and the sleep clinic recomended that before anything heavy. The heavy stuff never worked for me ironically but that does, go figure.1
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After my second child I dealt pretty hard with post partum anxiety and I started having panic attacks at night because I couldn't relax enough to sleep. I have dealt with anxiety all my life and have been on and off meds for it. Finally I got back on Lexapro and it did wonders for my sleep, took about two months to finally work. I also take melotonin about a half hour before bed and read to try to take my mind off of everything.0
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Are u able to take some time off - like 4-5 days to try to get back on track. I think getting up early as recommended above and functioning all day and Not going to sleep until 9-10 is a good start...
I dont and havent ever suffered from insomnia but my sister struggles with it so i know its so frustrating... good luck!0 -
MichelleLei1 wrote: »So for the past few months, I've really been struggling with severe chronic insomnia. I am on a sleep medication, but it has pretty much stopped working for me. I am working with my doctor to find a solution, but he's pretty unhelpful.
To put it perspective the past week has looked like
Monday: 7:30am - 1:00pm (4.5 hrs)
Tuesday: 2:00am- 4:00am; 6:00am-7:00am (3 hrs)
Wednesday 4:00am- 11:00am (7 hrs)
Thursday 5:00am - 7:30am: 9:30am- 12:00 (5 hrs)
Friday 2:30 am- 4:00am; 11:00am - 2:00pm (4.5 hrs)
Saturday 12:00am - 2:00am (2 hrs and counting)
TLDR I often can't fall asleep until past the sunrises, and if I do, I can't sleep more than 2 consecutive hours without waking up periodically throughout the night. Because of my sleeping issues I am steadily gaining weight.
Since I am awake a majority of the time, I often find myself genuinely hungry ALL THE TIME. To compensate for the lack of sleep, my body feels the need to shovel a constant stream of calories at all times. Although I try to portion my calories accordingly, I never 'plan' to have a meal at like 4:30 in the morning, but it ends up happening anyways if I'm awake and hungry.
It really is minimal weight gain, but I feel terrible about it, because it feels like it's beyond my control. I'm not really sure what I was trying to accomplish with this post, but I was just sick and frustrated and felt the need to vent a bit.
How long before trying to sleep are you unplugging from devices?
Have you looked into your magnesium levels?
I was an insomniac for years until I looked at magnesium, GABA, and lemon balm.
Hypnosis works wonders too.
Mike Mandel is running a special this week.
http://mikemandelhypnosis.com/a-good-nights-sleep-effective-treatment-for-insomnia-and-sleep-problems/
"When the sale goes live on Friday, you'll just enter the coupon code "blackfriday" (all lowercase) on the order form."
Best of luck. Insomnia blows.0 -
An interesting article on sleep and fat loss.
http://suppversity.blogspot.de/2011/08/fragmented-sleep-reduces-24h-fat.html?m=10
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