Sleep Walking? How about sleep eating?

Any one out there sleep walk? How about eating in your sleep?

Late night eating has always been a thing with me. I've done it as long as I can remember. As a kid, I loved to polish off a bowl of cereal in the middle of the night. Usually it was a bowl of Rice Krispies with about 3 teaspoons of sugar on it. I'd let the cereal get all soggy and pound it down and go back to bed. Most of the time I was vaguely aware of my surroundings - but still almost asleep. And I HATED being interrupted while I was chowing down. Every now and then my father would get up at the same time or maybe I woke him up and he'd come downstairs into the kitchen and there I'd be eating my bowl of cereal and I'd have the most visceral angry reaction to it. Boiling over anger. All I wanted was to be left alone with my bowel of cereal in the middle of the night and here comes this intruder. I don't recall acting on it or saying anything during those times but it might be fair to say a "Go Away" or "Leave Me Alone" might have come out of my mouth.

I know, it's completely weird. Some sort of sleep walking snack fest.

Diet-wise, back then, it was no big deal. My metabolism was in high gear and I was super active with sports and just being a kid. We still played outside for the day back then. Remember that?

Anyhow, this late night eating / sleep walking chow fest is still around. It's not something that I do all the time, but is something that occurs when I am trying to restrict calories or am feeling a bit stressed out. I've woken up in the morning to find the strangest evidence of the late night raid that happened. It might be a cracked egg in a pot with a piece of cheese. It might be a cereal box with the bag ripped open and flakes all over the counter and Splenda scattered all over the place.

On the diet side, the progress I made during the day gets shot to hell when this happens.

On the life side I keep wondering if I'm ever going to try to start the oven or stove top and really cause some havoc.

On the psychological side of things it's disturbing because CK has caught me now and then during one of these raids and she says it's not me. Of course it's me, I'm right there, but it's not the me she knows. This guy is angry and even scares her a bit. It's the same deal as when I was a kid. Same anger, same inability to stop it while it's happening. I'll tell you what, it scares me too. I've managed to do this sleep-eating thing under sedation. The pull / trigger for the behavior is that powerful.

The thing is, I lost a ton of weight during WOCS and never took a sleep walking stroll to the vending machines. And that was a very stressful environment with a ton of activity and a calorie restricted diet. I also never did it during college.

It doesn't take Freud to figure out that this is stress related though. Here I am in the middle of a big life change and who knows how it's going to work out. Numerous life stressor calculators show I'm at serious risk to illness due to stress here with everything that's gone on / is going on. That of course, brings my ulcerative colitis into play. Is it due to stress? The short answer from my gastroenterologist, is "No.". Is it exacerbated by it? Sure.

So what's the plan? Well, I'm not so sure at this point. Some of the stressors will take care of themselves over time. We'll have jobs. I'll be taking classes towards my B.S. in Geomatics and things won't be so up in the air. In the meantime I'm going to concentrate on having fun and using this time off to my best advantage with a mix of activities, watch what I eat and remind myself to chill out.