The behavior I tried to change was binge-eating at night. Throughout 2 days I measured myself whenever I felt the urge to eat at night, and figured out that some of the recurring reasons I had for developing this habit was being hungry at night and tired throughout the day. In addition, I found that it was easier to convince myself it was ok to binge eat at night if I told myself that I had missed a meal during the day or if I was so stressed with working throughout the whole day that I needed to eat something as a reward. On the contrary, I realized I would not eat at night if I was so tired throughout the day that I just wanted to crash and sleep.
After looking at these two models, I discovered two causality loops in my connection diagram that I thought were pretty interesting to note for this behavior. The first causality loop was that being hungry at night generally made me feel tired throughout the day, and leads me to take more time in general to work since I cannot concentrate. The longer time it takes for me to finish up all my work makes me miss meals more often in the day and makes me hungry again at night.
The second loop was that when I’m tired throughout the day, I generally crash and sleep much longer, which in turn often makes me miss breakfast or lunch sometimes when I oversleep. Because I miss a meal, I’m tired and hungry throughout the day.
I think that to remove this behavior, I need to realize how linked my hunger during the night is to how much sleep I get and the meals I eat throughout the day. If I make sure to sleep enough and eat enough at each meal, it would probably be easier for me to avoid binge eating at 12am.
