In short: I would say the overeating is based on some fear, thoughts around sleep and food winding up the mind like a wind-up toy, and the body takes on that tension too. When I can't sleep I scan my body and relax it area by area, and I put a steady foundation in place with little tweaks, like when and how I eat. I think the body is always speaking, and the question is whether we're listening.
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Someone asked me this: "I keep overeating before bed because I'm worried I'll get hungry and won't sleep.. how do I shift this fear?"
I'm not a sleep expert, but I have had to sleep every night of my life, and it's been some years. So this is what I've noticed for myself.
Why does the fear of getting hungry keep me eating?
The action you're taking is based on some fear. We can say the fear is basically some thoughts around sleep and food.
It's kind of like a wind-up toy. You're winding up the mind, winding up, winding up, winding up, and then the release. So you try to go to sleep in all that tension, mentally and emotionally, and the body is going to take that on as well.
On a practical level, I would say get back into the habits that have worked for you, like the timings for your food, so you know you're taken care of, because you've taken care of yourself. Then there's more than that, which is what the mind brings into play.
How do my thoughts turn into tension in the body?
I think this comes down to the core of what we do in our work, observing the thinking machine, the thought machine. This time around it's producing thoughts like, if I don't eat, this is going to happen, and if I do eat, that's not going to happen, and so on and so forth.
Focusing on those thoughts produces a certain kind of emotion, and those emotions result in certain kinds of tension patterns in the body, let's say.
What do I do when I can't sleep?
Personally, I've noticed over the years that when I can't sleep and I scan my body, there are tension patterns. The body is holding tension in different areas. Sometimes it's my face, my neck, my shoulders. I might think I'm really comfortable and relaxed in bed, so the head is going, I don't understand why I'm not falling asleep, I should be falling asleep, I'm relaxed. But actually, when I scan my body, I notice there's some tension in my neck, some in my shoulders, some in my face or jaw or something.
I want to say I do it systematically, but really I'm just scanning and relaxing.. this area, that area, that area. Generally I don't have problems sleeping, but there have been times, and it doesn't take too many rounds of full body scans and relaxing the body before I tend to fall asleep. For me personally, that has worked almost all the time, I would say.
What if my mind is too busy for that?
There are of course times when my mind is really busy. Life happens, you're dealing with stuff, and in those periods it can be hard to go to sleep because the mind is constant and busy. Even then, I find it's almost like a meditation, scanning the body, relaxing the body parts and the tension in the different areas. That has generally worked.
It shifts me out of trying to stop the mind thinking, which is addressing something that's going on in the mind at the level of the mind. I let the mind do its thing and switch to the body instead.
It's kind of like the yoga practice. If we're stressed out, thinking about a lot of stuff and feeling things because of the thoughts, we start to move the body, and we shift from mind to body. It's very different when you're moving through a posture, but in bed, I think the body scan is as close as I can get to that.
Thoughts will come in, and that's okay. I'm scanning again, relaxing this area, relaxing that area, going from head to toe, or toe to head, or whatever. That generally seems to help.
How do I work out what my body needs when it keeps changing?
Zooming out, and not just talking about any one area, I think more holistically it's over time just experimenting. I find the body is giving certain signals, and I'm like, okay, what does that signal mean? Is something changing in the body, so I need to adjust to it? Or is it, I don't know, I want to say ageing, the body going through its changes over time? It's evolving. It's not fixed. It's like a river, always moving, always changing, always shifting.
And so much of that is impacted by what we're going through externally, what's going on in our lives, and how we face it or don't face it, and how it impacts us internally.
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How do I make it easier on myself?
I find it helps to make it easier on myself, so I lay the foundations. What are the things I know that, if I just did the minimum.. what is my minimum to have a good foundation? And if I did a bit above the minimum, what gives me a more steady foundation? It's like the ground we're standing on being as steady as it can feel, metaphorically.
Getting enough sleep, for example, is something I've been playing around with quite a bit. There was a time when I wasn't sleeping a huge amount, every night, for years, and it wasn't impacting me negatively. I was fine. I did long meditations and slept not many hours, not that I condone it. Then I accidentally slept too long. It was many nights of not sleeping enough, and then one day of a reset, maybe in a week or a fortnight, where I'd sleep in and get, I don't know, eight or ten hours. And I found that wow, it's a whole different reality. My level of focus, my ability to process and think and make decisions, and to deal with what's happening through the day, and how many resources I have internally to deal with it.
I realised, wow, okay, that's what sleeping fewer hours, which I just thought was normal, does to me. That's what I pay for not sleeping enough. So these days I'm aiming to get eight hours of sleep. I don't think I'm hitting the eights, but it just feels much better, is what I'm saying.
Where do I start?
Start small. We always like to just go the full hog, we want to run the full marathon.. so it's a little jog, a little walk around the block first, then just build up from there.
It's kind of like that. What's your ideal, and how can you build that foundation? You're talking about food, and I talk about sleep. Maybe with food, a practical thing is timing. Eating a certain amount at certain times, or not certain things at certain times, because it has certain reactions in the body, or mentally or emotionally, or there's a certain result you find in your sleep. Like, okay, if I eat at this hour, I'm digesting, my body is digesting naturally, and I'm trying to sleep and it doesn't work so well. What if I move it back an hour, eat earlier, let's say an extra hour or half an hour? That's what I mean by experiment.
Why do little tweaks add up?
In our busy modern lives we're always looking for small wins. So what are the little tweaks you can make? Over time we make little tweaks, little tweaks, little tweaks, and they build up.
The thing about us as human beings is that when we do a little thing and get a result, we go, oh, that felt good, I'm going to do a little bit more of that. I find that's a really good way of building up whatever the habit is.
If this evening, for example, you have your dinner a bit earlier, or whatever the thing is that needs to shift, that's hitting in the direction of what you would like to build for yourself. And if most of the time it feels like you're standing on solid ground, the steady foundation, then most of your days you're going to be feeling pretty good. Obviously life happens, stuff happens, and that's just how it is. But we're giving ourselves a better chance of dealing with those things, and handling whatever needs to be handled in our adult lives, by putting these things in place, starting with taking care of yourself.
Taking care of ourselves is a form of self-love.
Does it matter how I eat, as well as when?
Sometimes we don't even think about it, because we're so in our heads. When you're eating, for example, there are no devices, so you can actually just sit and eat and taste the food and take in the nourishment, because maybe you're not stimulated, or causing more stress, while you're eating. I think that goes back to some of the old school ways of doing things, like sitting down around the dinner table, having dinner together, having a chat if you live with people, and giving yourself a chance to actually digest the food and taste it.
If it feels like, okay, it's off right now, then what is it that's off? And what, on a practical level, can shift? Then internally, so much of the time I think it's letting go, learning to let go of a certain thought or worry in the mind. It's hard to fall asleep when you're stressed out, for example, and it's hard to digest food when you're stressed out.
It's all the basics. There's nothing groundbreaking here, and I'm sure it's all stuff we know, but sometimes it's useful to be reminded. When was the last time I gave myself a chance to sit down and enjoy my meal? Maybe I'm always working when I'm eating. I think we can change that, and I'm speaking for myself as well. I find myself doing these things and I'm like, hang on, what am I doing? Switch off the device and just sit and eat.
We already know generally what the body needs. Going back to that and giving it that builds some kind of foundation, and then we're in a better place to deal with the roller coasters of our day, if it is a roller coaster. Obviously not every day is.
Does the energy of the food matter?
On food, energetically, I'll speak as a healer. Our food has a certain energy to it. So there are little practices, and you don't need to do this, but I do it because I have a belief that it works and it helps. I say thank you for the food, and I visualise light going into the food and raising the frequency of the food. If that's too much for you, don't worry about it. If that's too much, just sit and eat, and give the body a moment to take in the goodness that you're eating.
So it might help to eat some stuff that is actually good. These days we have things that we call food, and I wonder where it even came from. It's some kind of machine somewhere, and then we try to get the body to digest that.
Then there's where the food comes from, putting energy into the preparation, putting love into preparing the food, and then receiving that love that you put into it. So, taking time to sit, to eat, to digest. Maybe going for a little walk after dinner, around the block, to digest. Or if you live somewhere nice and green, some greenery.
What does my body need right now?
Sometimes I try to think about what the body needs, and then I ask instead: okay, what do I feel the body needs right now? There's tension in the body.
I was in the park earlier, and my back injury had been flaring up the last couple of days. I was sitting up and I was like, yeah, not comfortable. So I did some stretches, and then I thought, okay, I'm just going to lie on the ground. I let myself ground, and let the ground stretch out my back as I relaxed and let go into the ground. I'm like, yeah, cool, that feels good. Then I was looking out at the trees and the sky, and I thought, okay, that was a good little moment.
And sometimes we don't give ourselves those little moments. We're on this go, go, go mode, which I get into as well. It's good to balance out both. It's the sthira and sukha that we learn in yoga, the intense, focused energy and then the relaxed, softer energy. Both. We need that. The body needs that.
How do I listen to my body better?
I'll close off with this. I think practising yoga helps, and practising yoga while paying attention helps even more, as in bringing awareness to what the body is saying by sensation. It helps because the body is always speaking, and the question is whether we're listening.
So how can we listen better, and what do we do with that information? What does your body need right now? In the posture you're in right now, what signals and what sensations are you getting, without even having to jump into a posture? What do you feel? Where is the tension? Where are there aches and pains? Where is there ease? Where is there too much effort, trying to hold the pose, where you can relax a bit more? Or where does it need a bit more integrity, support? Or maybe you're hungry, and you don't ignore it, you actually respond to it.
So what does the body need, and how can we give it that, so that we're taking care of ourselves?
Questions People Ask
Why do I keep overeating before bed when I'm worried I won't sleep?
Dylan Ayaloo says the action is based on some fear, basically thoughts around sleep and food. He compares it to winding up a wind-up toy: you try to go to sleep in that tension, mentally and emotionally, and the body takes it on as well.
What can I do when I can't sleep?
He says that when he can't sleep and scans his body, he finds tension patterns in his face, neck and shoulders, even when he thinks he's comfortable. He relaxes area by area, and says it doesn't take too many rounds of full body scans before he tends to fall asleep. For him, that has worked almost all the time.
What if my mind is too busy to switch off?
Dylan Ayaloo says that even then, scanning the body is almost like a meditation. He lets the mind do its thing and switches to the body instead, a bit like the shift from mind to body in a yoga practice.
How do I build a steadier foundation?
He says it helps to make it easier on yourself: work out the minimum you need in place, like getting enough sleep, and start small, like a little jog before a marathon. He says little tweaks build up, and that taking care of ourselves is a form of self-love.
Does it matter how I eat, as well as when?
He says it can help to sit down and eat with no devices, taste the food and take in the nourishment, which he links to old school ways like having dinner together around the table. He asks, "When was the last time I gave myself a chance to sit down and enjoy my meal?"
How do I know what my body needs?
Dylan Ayaloo says the body is always speaking, and the question is whether we're listening. He suggests asking what you feel right now, where the tension, aches, ease or too much effort is, and says maybe you're hungry, and you don't ignore it, you actually respond to it.
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Big love, Dylan