Night Binges

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Q: I work out five to six times a week doing cardio and lifting weights. I'm also a dancer and train two to four hours a day. I follow a well-balanced diet, but I have a major problem: I wake up in the middle of the night and then binge on things that I would never eat during the day—bread, sweets, dairy and juice. I'm trying desperately to lose weight but I know I never will with this horrible habit. What should I do?

A: Your eating behavior seems to be disordered. There are several clinically defined eating disorders, but other behavior patterns can be classified as ‘disordered’ if they suggest a preoccupation with food that may be harmful to your health or well-being. So what’s the cause? There are two possibilities:

You simply may not be eating enough. A rough guesstimate of the time you spend working out and dancing every week suggests that you are spending about 18 hours a week exercising, and probably burning more than 8,000 extra calories a week. To fuel all of your activity, you need to be eating your normal energy requirements plus about another 1,100 calories. Without knowing your height and weight, it’s impossible to know your daily energy expenditure, but an average woman needs about 2,000 calories per day. So that suggests that you need to be eating more than 3,000 calories every day to provide your body with the energy it needs to keep up with your activity level.

Research has shown that a high proportion of female athletes and dancers undereat, and are at risk of developing an eating disorder. The pressure you may feel to be ultra-thin means that even if you are a healthy eater, you still may not be eating enough. If you need 3000 or more calories, but only take in 1500 because you watch you eat, your body is put into starvation mode. This may trigger fat-preservation responses such as a slower metabolism and a decrease in lean body mass from muscle and organs. Plus you are at risk of nutritional deficiencies, lower bone mass and even early onset osteoporosis and menstrual irregularities that can affect fertility.

The fact that you mention you eat foods at night that you would “never eat during the day” indicates that you may, indeed, not be eating enough, and your body goes to bed craving calories to restock energy supplies. Many of the foods you avoid are OK, and even necessary, for you to eat. In fact, you seem to be chopping most carbs from your diet. A highly active woman needs EXTRA carbs, so going low-carb is a bad move. Avoiding dairy may mean that you are not taking in enough calcium, unless you are making a concerted attempt to supplement or eat calcium-rich veggies like kale and nuts such as almonds. But chances are, if you are not eating enough calories, you are low in many essential vitamins and minerals. At the very least, you are likely to feel chronically fatigued and be at a higher risk of injuries.

You should have your diet evaluated by a sports nutritionist. Find one near you through www.eatright.org. Some studies have shown that female endurance athletes who eat more often do not necessarily gain weight if they were not eating enough in the first place. Ideally you should figure out how many calories your body needs every day, and then make sure that you are eating that amount. It is not more effective to make drastic calorie cuts, especially if you exercise a lot. If you diet, you should cut out only about 200 to 300 calories per day—so that might mean that you are eating as much as 2700 calories each day. You should eat consistently (three to six small meals per day), make sure that you are not going for periods longer than three hours without eating something and eat before one of your long training sessions (so you don’t embark upon a heavy exercise session when your body is hungry). Also, have a sports drink, some fruit or juice during your two- to four-hour dance marathons to keep your energy levels up.

Of course, there might be a psychological basis to your night binges. Two serious conditions characterized by eating during the night are Binge-Eating Disorder (BED) and Night-Eating Syndrome (NES). These are seen mostly in obese people and are diagnosed based on specific criteria which may or may not fit your own patterns. Read about BED and NES.

Binge eating tends to be accompanied by a feeling of a total loss of control. Night eating, on the other hand, does not necessarily result in binges. However, the majority of the night-eaters’ calories are consumed at night since those people tend to delay eating most of the day. Psychological counseling is recommended to deal with the underlying feelings of stress or depression that may trigger binges or night-eating.

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Martica is a Manhattan-based exercise physiologist and nutritionist and an award-winning fitness instructor. She has written for a variety of publications including Self , Health , Prevention , The New York Times and others. Martica is the author of seven books, including her latest, - Cross-Training for Dummies . (Read her full bio.)