It’s Happened

If you are like me…and of course you are…you have  one or two friends, contacts, acquaintances, family members that writes emails in the middle of the night.  You get up in the morning and read their mail and notice that the time is 2 am or something dumb like that.   I have always thought to myself  “wow, what a drag, not sleeping, writing emails in the wee hours, surely there is something better (that pitiful someone) could be doing?”    And when will I ever learn that the things I eschew (I have never used that word before…how exciting…oh my…I really am in trouble) will soon be the very things I will be doing too.  So here I am, responding to old facebook posts, checking email, ordering stuff and blogging… in the middle of the night!

I would love to blame my insomnia on menopause.  I could, it is lurking, although all systems have been fairly normal for some months.  I could say that my distress about the Gulf spill woke me up-and I am distressed, freaked in a way that I haven’t felt since I was 10 and worried that my two older brothers were going to die in Viet Nam.  I could say that the crazy wicked thunder storm that rolled over an hour ago, with crashes so close and so booming I thought I was in an air raid woke me-oh wait it did.  But the thing that got me out of bed and onto this gizmo at 4:24 am was my belly.  I’m hungry!  Which raises the question-does the body know or care what time of day we eat?  If it is good for the metabolism to eat every 2 hours then why have we all been told we shouldn’t eat in the night?

I have done a little research on this topic and there isn’t really that much out there.  Some simply state the obvious, that it would be best if we were resting, sleeping, tucking into a little REM.  Others suggest if you do get up to have some water because it is likely that you are thirsty rather than hungry…I don’t know about you, but I can pretty much tell the difference between a dry mouth needing a drink and a full on rumble in my tumble.  No one can seem to really prove that eating in the wee hours is a bad thing.  This is what I know  about it.  I make crumby choices in the night.  I want cookies, pie, sweet cereal, toast with lots of butter.  I am not making a salad or slicing an apple…it’s a full on grab and go of whatever I can get my sleepy fist around.

Knowing this about myself I do the following: I do not keep that sort of thing in the house.  If it is here, I will eat it.  And if I do it in the middle of the night, that is more calories in, cals that I might not have had if there wasn’t anything in the kitchen worth getting out of bed for. Turn on the light, read for 10 minutes, sleep will return.

Moral of the story; don’t buy the temptress foods.

That is all the wisdom I have about that.  Lame perhaps, but it is 4:33 am.  Yikes!