PhronesisWe apply the Displacement Framework to Night Eating Syndrome (NES), formalizing it as a circadian-affective wrong attractor in which food intake is phase-shifted to the wrong circadian window and serves a mood-regulatory function. The circadian-eating ground state S°_circadian is defined as a calibrated phase relationship between the circadian system, sleep, and hunger — not a rigid schedule but a biologically-appropriate temporal distribution of caloric intake with morning appetite present and nocturnal eating absent.
The NES wrong attractor W_nes is triply maintained: evening/nocturnal hyperphagia (caloric intake at the wrong circadian phase), morning anorexia (reciprocal morning appetite suppression perpetuating the shifted pattern), and affective driving (evening negative affect regulated through eating — with elevated evening cortisol as the biological generator of evening D(ξ)). The sleep-wake boundary erosion component is formally modeled: nocturnal awakenings with eating create a ghrelin/leptin deepening loop (poor sleep increases appetite hormones, increasing the probability of further nocturnal eating).
The metabolic Φ cost of eating at the wrong circadian phase — independent of total caloric intake, reflecting insulin insensitivity and lipogenic bias at night — is formally distinguished from pure caloric overconsumption. The shame-concealment loop deepens W_nes by blocking help-seeking. Nine formal propositions are derived. CBT (Allison protocol), sertraline (O'Reardon RCT), and progressive muscle relaxation for evening anxiety are formalized as return path interventions.