Sleep: How It Affects Your Weight and Contributes to Your Eating Disorder

Sleep Affects Your Weight and Contributes to Your Eating Disorder
If you’ve struggled with an eating disorder and weight, you might be used to considering diet and exercise the main factors in your situation. Yet, there’s another factor, often overlooked, that is crucial toward achieving balance, recovery, and maintaining a healthy weight. That is sleep. A consistent, healthy sleep routine is a powerful aspect of your attitude toward your body, how you handle cravings, if you have cravings, and how and when you eat.

Studies and experience show that lack of nourishing sleep relates to weight gain, difficulties in losing weight, cravings, and poor stress management.

The Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics published a 15-year study showing that even some sleep deprivation is associated with weight gain and a higher tendency toward obesity. These findings show what I and other clinicians have noticed for years. Less than adequate sleep is part of maintaining an eating disorder.

The numbers are this: adequate sleep for an American adult is 7 - 9 hours a night. But, over 28% of adults get less than six hours a night. 28% of American adults are sleep-deprived.

And, among American adults, 35% are now obese. The impact of sleep deprivation doesn't just make us tired during the day. It affects our ability to make decisions, manage stress, and understand hunger cues.

As a clinician specializing in eating disorder recovery, I work with people who want to be free of their eating disorder. They want to healthy thoughts that enrich their lives and relationships. They want eating to be an experience of nourishment and pleasure, with no fear or guilt or worry.

My clients want lasting relief and peace. Our work goes deeper than finding a quick fix for binge eating or restricting symptoms. Instead, we discover what sustainable recovery truly looks like and what’s required to nurture it. Examining sleep habits is an essential, often surprisingly powerful, part of this work.

Why Sleep Matters in Recovery Work

If you struggle with disordered eating, sleep may feel like a safe place when you are not eating or dealing with feelings about food. But the relationship between sleep and eating is complex. Some people get up in the night to eat to get back to sleep, and they may develop a continuous pattern of eating to sleep.

What happens when you are sleep deprived?:

• Distorted Perceptions: Your perceptions are altered. You are more likely to misinterpret what others say or mean. You can suffer from anxiety or become argumentative when the situation does not call for such a response. You can feel more vulnerable and reach for food to soothe you.
• Emotional Vulnerability: When you are tired, you seek comfort. To a person with an eating disorder, this means reaching for high-fat, salty, creamy or crunchy, sweet, and heavy foods. You want relief from real or imagined stressful situations. This can lead to emotional eating or full-on binge episodes. 
• Hunger and Cravings:  Research shows that sleep deprivation impacts hormones such as leptin and ghrelin that affect hunger and satiety. Sleep deprivation causes ghrelin levels to rise. This makes you feel hungrier. At the same time, your leptin levels fall. This reduces your sense of fullness. You want to eat and can easily overeat because you want quick-energy foods high in sugar or refined carbs.
  • Low Energy and Misinterpreted Fatigue:  Sensory cues get mixed up. You can easily mistake fatigue for hunger. You reach for sugar or caffeine or anything you think might boost your energy when what you really need is sleep. Sugar and carb-heavy foods willl seem especially appealing.
  Adequate sleep will not cure an eating disorder. But it will give you more access to your healing process. Seemingly out-of-the-blue and irresistible cravings won't sideline you. You'll have a better opportunity to experience more time in a stable condition. You will be more able to work through the deep issues that create and govern your eating disorder.

Your Sleep Check: Questions to Assess Your Sleep Patterns

It’s essential to examine how you view and prioritize sleep in your life and understand the quality of the rest you’re currently getting. Here are some questions to help you gain insight:

• Do you often nod off unintentionally, such as in front of the TV or while reading?
• Do you avoid getting into bed to sleep and instead fall doze in a chair or your day clothes?
• Do you need an alarm to wake up, and do you often hit snooze?
• Are there times when you sleep for extended hours (10, 12, or even 14 hours) in a single stretch?
• Do you rely on caffeine or energy drinks to get through your day?
• Do you pride yourself on getting by with minimal sleep, thinking you need less than others?
• Do you have bouts of insomnia?

Practical Steps for Developing a Sleep Routine

So, how can you establish a healthy, consistent sleep routine that will support your recovery and overall well-being? Here are some guidelines:
1. Give yourself a consistent sleep schedule: Set a bedtime and wake-up time that you can maintain, even on weekends. Your goal is to work up to eight-hour chunks. Be patient with yourself. You may begin with two or three-hour chunks and have difficulty falling asleep. Over time, your body will trust you and give you longer sleep bits as you move toward your goal.
2. Move into sleep time with care and respect.
It would be best to avoid screen time for at least an hour before bed. You can read a book, but nothing on your phone or iPad—relaxation exercises, including deep breathing and soothing mental imagery, help, too. A simple body scan can help you relax your muscles.

3. Your sleeping space. The best temperature for sleeping is between 60 and 65 degrees and a humidity level of under 60. Your space should be dark and quiet, which is soothing and increases your ability to produce melatonin. Be creative. Perhaps these conditions are natural to your sleeping environment. But maybe you need to wear a sleeping mask that blocks out light or hang blackout curtains. Maybe you need a white noise machine. Be careful with that. You need lots of space between you and working technology.

4. A no-brainer is to limit caffeine or any stimulant. They remain in your system for hours. Even decaf drinks contain some caffeine. So does chocolate. Skip the caffeine completely if you can. If not, work up to that by only taking in caffeine in the morning.

5. Keeping a journal is good for many things. If you already keep a journal, use a few sentences to describe your sleep experiences. You can discover what seem like little things that disturb your falling asleep. You may need to put your phone on silent. You may need to stop eating earlier. You may find that you sleep better when the door to your room is partially or fully closed.

Benefits of giving yourself quality sleep

Sleep and Eating Disorder Recovery

Quality sleep is part of your life in recovery and your ability to maintain your healthy weight. Nourishing your body and mind with quality sleep is as important as nourishing yourself with quality food you take in regularly. When well-rested, you’ll be better equipped to face challenges without needing the immediate comfort or distraction that food can provide.

Benefits of giving yourself quality sleep:

• Emotional Resilience: You are better able to make choices that are realistic and in harmony with your long-term goals.W
• Mindful Eating: You are more aware of what you are eating. You are not eating for immediate relief. You can recognize hunger and fullness which weakens your tendency to binge or restrict.
• Better Decision-Making: Your rested brain can think better. Your mind is sharp. You make decisions that support your health and well-being.

As Shakespeare wrote:

"The innocent sleep,
Sleep that knits up the ravell’d sleave of care,
The death of each day’s life, sore labour’s bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course,
Chief nourisher in life’s feast."

Sleep offers respite and essential nourishment in a world of pressures and expectations. Before you adjust your diet or increase your exercise, consider beginning with sleep. Investing in a consistent, healthy sleep routine gives you the gift of stability, resilience, and a more straightforward path forward in your recovery.

Take some time to reflect on your relationship with sleep, examine any patterns, and consider the role it might play in your overall well-being. You may find that sleep issues have a more significant impact on your life, your eating disorder, and your weight than you realize.

References and further information

A long-term study in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics found that even partial sleep deprivation was associated with weight gain, reinforcing the notion that chronic sleep deprivation can exacerbate or even trigger unhealthy eating behaviors. This finding is echoed by experts at UCLA, who note that sleep deprivation can interfere with hormone regulation, specifically leptin, and ghrelin, which help control appetite and feelings of fullness. A lack of sleep disrupts the balance of these hormones, leading to increased hunger and cravings for high-calorie, carbohydrate-rich foods that provide quick energy but may contribute to weight gain and unhealthy eating patterns.

Sleep can be especially important for individuals recovering from eating disorders. Poor sleep can increase stress and emotional vulnerability, making it harder to resist binge eating or restrictive behaviors that may seem to provide temporary relief from emotional distress. UCLA’s insights explain that inadequate sleep impacts the brain’s reward system, leading people to crave foods that offer a brief sense of comfort and satisfaction. When this craving is coupled with emotional fatigue and reduced self-control, it can increase the likelihood of engaging in disordered eating behaviors.

As part of a recovery-focused routine, sleep hygiene—maintaining consistent sleep and wake times, limiting screen exposure before bed, and avoiding caffeine late in the day—can greatly support healthier eating behaviors and emotional resilience. In Anti-Diet by Christy Harrison, readers are encouraged to view sleep as part of overall wellness, not just a passive activity but an essential component of recovery. By getting enough sleep, individuals may be better equipped to manage emotions, reduce cravings, and engage more fully in therapeutic work.

Several excellent resources offer deeper insights if you seek guidance in this area. More Than a Body by Lexie Kite and Lindsay Kite explores body image resilience, which sleep and other wellness practices can profoundly impact. For those navigating the medical aspects of eating disorders, Sick Enough by Jennifer L. Gaudiani offers a comprehensive look at how physiological and emotional health are interlinked and how restorative sleep is essential in sustaining recovery and health. Websites like UCLA Health provide additional tips for building healthy sleep routines, from creating a dark, cool, and quiet environment to setting a regular schedule and avoiding screens before bed.

In your journey to eating disorder recovery or weight management, consider sleep not as a luxury but as a core component of overall well-being. By prioritizing sleep, you can foster better emotional balance, mitigate stress-related eating triggers, and ultimately support your path toward lasting health and wellness.

Here is a list of references on how sleep affects weight management and eating disorder recovery:

1.Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics - Long-term studies on sleep deprivation and its correlation with weight gain highlight sleep's role in maintaining a healthy weight. This journal provides a scientific foundation for understanding the connection between sleep and eating habits.

2. UCLA Health - Their insights on how sleep influences hormone regulation (leptin and ghrelin) and cravings show the critical link between sleep quality and food choices, especially for those managing weight and eating disorders​

3. Anti-Diet by Christy Harrison examines the broader impact of wellness, including the importance of sleep in promoting healthier eating behaviors and emotional stability.

4. More Than a Body by Lexie Kite and Lindsay Kite - This book emphasizes body image resilience and wellness practices, including the significance of sleep in managing stress and maintaining a balanced relationship with food.5. Sick Enough: A Guide to the Medical Complications of Eating Disorders by Jennifer L. Gaudiani - A comprehensive resource that addresses how physiological factors like sleep contribute to overall recovery from eating disorders, with practical medical advice for managing health holistically.

5. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) - CDC research includes data on sleep deprivation and its effects on health, highlighting that nearly a third of adults sleep less than the recommended amount, which has wide-ranging implications for physical and mental health.

6. National Institutes of Health (NIH) - Their research on sleep deprivation’s effects on mental and physical health includes the role of sleep in regulating emotional responses and maintaining a healthy weight.

For additional information, UCLA Health offers a helpful article on how sleep deprivation affects food choices and weight management:

Macbeth (2.2.46-51)

Not Only Amount, But Timing of Sleep Can Be Important for Mental Health

See: Healing Your Hungry Heart: Recovering from Your Eating Disorder, chapter 5, "Boundaries: a challenge in early recovery."

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Please share your thoughts in the comment section below.

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Written by Joanna Poppink, MFT. Joanna is a psychotherapist in private practice specializing in eating disorder recovery, stress, PTSD, and adult development.

She is licensed in CA, AZ, OR and FL. Author of the Book: Healing Your Hungry Heart: Recovering from Your Eating Disorder

Appointments are virtual.

For a free telephone consultation, e-mail her at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

For a free telephone consultation, e-mail her at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

 

 Shared activities with friends are fun and boost your health.

How to make friends is a skill we need as we move through life. Plus, friendship plays an important part in continued eating disorder recovery. Isolation can be familiar and life-draining.

Wandering through grocery store aisles in a state where you feel invisible, just looking for foods that will be good for a binge, is practice for continued isolation. You feel invisible, but what's happening is that the people in the store seem almost ghostlike. It's not that they don't see you. It's that you don't see them.

When you are on the path to recovery, your eating or not eating may be more in harmony with your body's needs. But without friendship, you may roam through your days looking for stimulation and not seeing people.  You may miss opportunities to make friends. You may believe you are as invisible as ever.

                                                                                       Secret to success journal

 

What’s your journal for? Do you know the secret to making your journal a guide to success?

• You miss the value of using a success journal if your journal is just a dumping ground where you throw in your thoughts, feelings, dreams, things you said or wish you had said, to-do lists, and ideas, essentially treating it like a trash bin. You get only the minimum value from this process.  It’s like the trash bin in your kitchen. You are not littering your home or the counters. You’ve stopped any smell from developing. You prevented any vermin from being attracted. You send the contents to a larger trash bin and then the city dump.
• A better approach is to use your success journal as a clearinghouse. You review the contents regularly to ensure you haven’t lost anything valuable. Most of the contents may not be worth saving. However, some of it reminds you of something you've forgotten. Some of it brings up feelings that surprise you. You may want to reconsider some of it.
• But the secret to a success journal is to make it a conversation. Creating an honest dialogue with it is the secret to getting total value from your journal. 

Friends change as you heal and mature. Being in harmony with your true self attracts new and more healthy relationships. *

When you have an eating disorder friends who are attracted to you are attracted to who you are and how you respond with your eating disorder intact. Friend change as you change throughout your recovery work.

How you and your friends change as you recover

When you are deep in your eating disorder your friends and associates have a relationship with a sick person.  When you start to get well your attitudes, choices and responses change. Your friends' responses will change too.

To mature women: Regardless of your age, size, shape, color, mental or physical health or political situation, the glorious free and visionary you is always alive within you.

A mature woman, decades after eating disorder recovery, may live a life fraught with relationship, career and self-esteem difficulties. You are no longer starving, binging or purging, but you still suffer from painful issues in your life, particularly self-doubt.

If you went through effective psychotherapy you found your way to ending your eating disorder behaviors. As a mature woman today, maybe you rarely think of those starving, binging, food-obsessed days and nights.

Yet underlying psychic structures of the eating disorder can still be present, ready to spring into action when you are threatened by more than you can bear or allow yourself to see or know.

Bias Clarity and the Therapeutic Alliance 

Bias in psychotherapy needs to be on the table. This is critical for a cooperative alliance between client and psychotherapist.

With or without an eating disorder, we all live our lives based on our agendas with our values and perceived survival needs leading the way. If we balance our emotions and stress levels with overeating we will get short term benefits. If we let overeating continue to balance our tolerance for stress we move into isolation, self-criticism and loneliness break our own hearts and can't save ourselves from our pain.

Guarantee? My informed consent form that clients sign before working with me states that no guarantee comes with psychotherapy. Yet psychotherapists and clients strive together for healing and recovery. Five phases of the work create the strongest possibility for success.

Despite the lack of a guarantee, clients have hope and willingness to work as do psychotherapists. The client puts energy and commitment into her work because she wants health, freedom and happiness. The psychotherapist puts energy into the work because she’s seen healing and recovery in others and has a growing framework of what makes recovery possible.

When the psychotherapist sees the commitment of the client's energy, the psychotherapist’s commitment and energy for the client’s well-being grows and vice versa. Therapy is a partnership on the healing journey.

A bell alone can still ring.

Binge Eating for Christmas Companionship

People who binge eat often isolate themselves. Was that you this Christmas? Were you alone? Did you go into a cave and wait for Christmas to pass by? Did you hope for phone calls and invitations that didn’t come? Did you binge-eat and watch TV?

It was worse this year because of Covid. You couldn't go to a movie by yourself. You couldn’t go to an in-person OA meeting or a 12-step marathon to be with people, even if you didn’t know them.

Going to a seminar or workshop so you could be with people celebrating in a way that blended with the workshop theme was too risky this year. Some of you got sick and stayed in bed under the quilt with hot tea. Some of you wrote letters or wrote in your journal.

One woman made a fire, sat with her animals in the living room and read a book of Christmas stories and legends from around the world. It was nice and the best she could do.