Waking up hungry in the middle of the night?
Recently, it seems like more often than not when I wake up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, I am hungry, really really hungry. I always ignore it and go back to sleep, because if I gave in and stayed awake long enough to fix myself a snack, I would never get back to sleep. I've always thought it was a good thing to wake up hungry (in the morning), because that said to me that I hadn't eaten too much the day before, and "breakfast" was literally "breaking my fast." Now, I wonder if it means that I am not eating enough?
I hit a plateau in July (stopped losing weight, still eating 1400/day), eventually just gave up and stopped counting, although didn't change my eating habits much, and have been maintaining the same weight since then. I began trying again in January to lose the weight, this time at 1350/day (recalc based on my previous weight loss), but have not made a single pound of progress. I am toying with the idea of increasing my calories, but it just seems so dangerous. I'm afraid if I start eating more, I will gain weight and then still not be able to get it off. Then again, it's getting very frustrating putting in all the effort to see no results. I would be open to going down in calories as well, but at this point I'm afraid that if I AM supposed to be eating more, then eating less will be even worse!
Do you think I should take the fact that I wake up hungry at 4am as a sign that I am not eating enough? If it matters, I exercise ~3x/week, and semi-cycle my calories, in that I keep a spreadsheet that calculates my weekly average, so some days are 1600, some are 1200, and as long as my average for the week is approx 1350 I am good. Do you have any advice for me? Sorry I am so confused... I thought I was on a great track, now I just don't know. Thanks in advance!
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