Kelly C. Allison - Overcoming Night Eating Syndrome: A Step-by-step Guide to Breaking the Cycle

If you suffer from Night Eating Syndrome (NES), you know that it is disruptive to your life and damaging to your health, but only recently have health providers and the public begun to recognize it as a serious problem needing treatment. Characterized by lack of appetite in the morning, overeating at night, and waking to eat throughout the night, NES has started receiving more publicity and, just as important, more funding for research to find better ways of treating this complex problem.

Remember you are not alone. About 9 percent of people seen in clinics for treatment of obesity are also suffering from NES. Although you do not have to be obese to suffer from NES, approximately a third or more of individuals who are extremely overweight, ranging from 27 to 42 percent, also have NES (Hsu, Betancourt, and Sullivan 1996; Rand, Macgregor, and Stunkard 1997). Both men and women are affected by NES, with men representing over 40 percent of all people with the syndrome. By reading this book and working through the exercises, you will learn about the different components of the syndrome and how each component has targeted treatments that can help to reduce your problems with NES.

Our intention throughout this book is to offer you hope and help. We are well aware that some of the physicians you may visit might not even acknowledge your problem, so we feel that our book will fill an important gap in providing information and guiding you to take charge of your health, your weight, and your life.

Who We Are

Dr. Albert Stunkard. Of the three of us, Dr. Stunkard has the longest history of working with NES. In fact, in 1955 Dr. Stunkard and two of his colleagues were the first to identify and publish an article about NES (Stunkard, Grace, and Wolff 1955; Stunkard 1959). Though more than fifty years have passed since he first learned about night eating syndrome, his introduction to it was so dramatic that it has stayed with him to this day.

Dr. Stunkard recalls, I was then a resident-in-training for psychiatry and I was treating Maxine, a sixteen-year-old high-school student who had been referred to the Psychiatry Clinic for obesity and for depression. At the time, obesity was widely viewed as an eating disorder, and psychotherapy was considered an appropriate treatment for it as well as for depression. Over a period of three months Maxine made considerable progress; she lost ten pounds and came out of her depression, smiling and full of life. At this point she reported a series of troubling interactions with her father, who had begun to sexualize their relationship. Then one evening she arrived at my office to tell me, mournfully, that her parents had told her that she could not continue therapy.

Thoroughly disappointed with this outcome, I turned to a small group of fellow trainees who regularly met to discuss patients and problems and offer support to each other. While discussing Maxine, I turned on an audiotape to convey a feeling for her mood. All of a sudden, one of the trainees, an obese young woman, gasped for air, rose from the floor on which we had been sitting, and staggered out of the room. I followed her to find her in the middle of a panic attack. After she had recovered, she returned to the group and explained what had happened.