Anna Ryan from the UK is one of an almost insignificant 3 percent of the population suffering from a very rare condition known as Sleep Related Eating Disorder, or SRED. In a new interview with Closer magazine, the woman, who at the age of 42 has reached a weight of 120kg (19 stone), says her life is a genuine nightmare since, no matter how much she diets and works out, she continues to get up in the middle of the night and ransack the fridge, gorging on everything she can lay her hands on, even those things she wouldn’t normally touch.

Mrs. Ryan has always had a heavier frame, she admits for the mag, but it’s in recent years that she started to notice with the utmost concern that, no matter how hard she watched her diet and worked out, she still piled on the pounds at an alarming rate. At one point, she confesses, she even gained as much as 3 stone in just two months, and that was when she consumed no more than 1,200 calories a day and worked out for at least an hour daily. She saw several specialists but no one could tell her what – if anything – was wrong with her.

Then, one morning, she woke up to find the sheets covered in crumbs, which is when she realized it was something she was doing at night that was upsetting her diet and entire metabolism, something that she could never remember the next day. “There were broken biscuits in the sheets and all over my face. The kitchen looked like a bomb had hit it and I realized I must have eaten in my sleep. My husband Kenny found it quite funny but I was terrified – I couldn’t remember anything!” Mrs. Ryan says for Closer.

The moment she came to this realization, she continued with her diet and workout plan, and went to more specialists with her problem. By this time, she also had to face being ridiculed by friends and acquaintances, who either found the situation terribly funny or thought she was doing it on purpose and then lying to them about it. Even when she was prescribed sedatives – enough to take out an elephant, she says – she would still get up and eat as much as 2,000 calories in one sitting, as she later found by installing cameras throughout the house to monitor her nightly activity.

“One night I ate a whole packet of cream cakes, but I also ate things I’d never have normally. I don’t even like peanut butter, but one night I ate an entire jar. One night I ate a packet of butter covered in ketchup, which made me very ill. I tried locking the bedroom door, but I’d either unlock it or end up hurting myself trying.” Mrs. Ryan says of her attempts to control the disorder that has changed her life in ways others could not even suspect.

As for those who still believe her suffering from SRED is a joking matter, they might want to reconsider that. “I’m desperately worried about the effect my disease is having on my health. It gets me down and it’s embarrassing too – people don’t always believe you, or they think it’s funny. But for me, it’s been a nightmare.” Mrs. Ryan concludes by saying.