[BlueTopaz]

Hi All---

I wake up each night between 2:00 - 3:00 and can't get back to sleep. Lack of sleep is driving me nuts....Also, I have no appetite and I know I need to eat enough healthy food or my immune system will go down and I will get sick.

So, how long did it take you until you had normal eating and sleeping habits, and how long was your relationship before it ended?

Thanks so much, and peace to all you!!

[allaboutchoices]

It took me two weeks of NC, so total of over one month.
Before I'd wake up and just couldn't stay in bed as I would start having anxiety attacts. I dropped almost 20lbs almost instantly (it's back now unfortunatelly).
Nothing would work before. I would get hammered and pass out for few hours just to wake up crying and feeling a lot worse.
Now I sleep like a baby again and eating for two.

[Fallen_Angel]

It took two months and a new job before I started feeling anywhere near "normal" after the demise of my three and a half plus year relationship.

After a week or so, I was eating normally again. But the sleep thing is still a problem from time to time. If I start thinking about my ex before going to bed, I feel nauseous and I toss and turn.

Today marks exactly seven months, and I am just now realizing this!! Before I would "remember" at the beginning of the day, so perhaps this is progress.

[Tangerina]

It took me a tiny bit over 1 month... I lost some weight because I was so stressed and couldn't eat but was exercising because it made me feel better (y'know, that exercise high).... I could never fall to sleep so I would have a shot of rum many nights just to relax a tiny bit enough to go to sleep.... and then I just kind of got better.... like real suddenly I let go of the situation enough that although it still bothered me it wasn't ruining my life or my brain to the point where it was hurting my body anymore... wierd....

Haha, when I fell in love again I gained weight because when I am happy I love sweets... when I am sad I hate food....

[brooke7777]

I ate next to nothing for almost 3 weeks. I tried to force feed myself, but would always end up feeling nauseous. I was also exercising everyday, so I lost about 15 pounds, which was a lot, being that I am thin to begin with. I have gained about 7 pounds back, but I think that I was too skinny for a while...I'd still like to drop another pound or two, though. Sleeping is another story. I still struggle with sleeping. At first, I barely slept at all..maybe 1 or 2 hours, if I was lucky. Then it got to be about 3 or 4 hours for a little while. It's now 2 1/2 months later and I'm sleeping 5-6 hours each night. I just can't get my mind to stop thinking. I've found that journaling helps a bit...it seems to get some of those thoughts out of my head, but I still can't get my mind to shut down.

[J dub]

I lost 15 lbs because I literally stopped eating...I remember one day the only thing I ate before going out to the bar was a drumstick (the ice cream stuff) and its no wonder I was feelin ill the next day.

It took me about 3 weeks before I started to eat semi normal again, but even then it wasnt quite my usual. I am one of those eat-small-meals-all-day-long kinds of girls, so normally I am always munchin on something (gotta thank my dad for my awesome metabolism, thank god for that) so people started noticing not only was I getting sickly looking but also never eating.

So, I think its safe to say a breakup is a tried and true way to diet, without necessarily wanting to lol. But on the upside, if you run in to the ex you look a lil slimmer hehe.

Oh, we were together almost 3 yrs before the breakup.

[dawn duval]

My last big breakup was in March. We were together for a year and a half, and it took me 3 and a half months to get over it.

I had the same problems: couldn't sleep, couldn't eat. Most annoying thing was I checked my horoscope religiously to see if it predicted us getting back together.

Now I'm SO GLAD we broke up!!! I see how wrong we were for each other. Believe me, it does get better. Now, I almost never think about him, except when I recall how irritating he could be. And that just makes me glad we broke up.

[genEric]

I was on the Heartbreak Starvation Diet <tm> for only about a week after my breakup. Sleep was short and to-the-point; I stayed busy frantically cleaning and rearranging after work so that I would be tired at days end. I'm still not sleeping quite enough- waking up too early, but I've never really been a big sleeper anyhow...

During "diet week" I had zero appetite, but being thin I knew I HAD to eat. I simply grabbed a tiny little bite of whatever might look appetizing whenever I could. Half a tomato, a chug of milk, handful of chips, etc. The upside is that little middle-age belly that formed over the past year is shrinking! I started stretching and doing a few crunches each evening and lo and behold my mini-gut is fading!

I'm right back to my usual self now, three weeks later: I am the eating machine! I thank God and my father for a blazing metabolism as well Jdub!

genEric

[scobro]

It took me two months I lost 15 pounds it was hell.I couldn't sleep or eat if I did sleep it was 2-3 hours a night.

[downcydeguy]

It's been over 2 weeks for me and I still cannot sleep. I'm not a big eater so skipping a lot of meals wasn't that uncommon for me. I wish I knew HER answer to this question though.

[seachange]

My experiences with the Diet:

I've gone through that can't-eat-or-sleep thing twice in the recent past. The first time was when I separated from my exH a few years ago. We were together 7 years, and right after the separation, I just completely shut down. I couldn't eat a damn thing, except when my family insisted. That lasted for several months. Ugh. I'd say I probably lost about 15-20 pounds, which, considering I didn't weigh all that much to begin with, made me look rather skeletal.

As for my more recent breakup - it took me about 3 weeks to wean myself back to eating better. It's been a stressful few years (big changes in relationships, career, and location in that time), so mostly I was still pretty thin going into this one.

However, though I wasn't any hungrier this time around, I think that since I had relatively recently been through it and was more conscious of what my body was up to, I tried harder to force myself to eat. Also, yoga helps me keep my appetite up now.

Sleep hasn't gotten much better though. Working on that one next.

Oh, I wanted to add - I realized some time after the first episode just how much of a control issue not eating had become. I felt like my life was careening out of control and there was a grim determination to knowing that I could decide what to eat and when. But once I became conscious that that was my thought process, I knew I had to retrain myself to not make it about eating. Or I'd starve.