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Why Do We Overeat?
By Linda | August 21, 2008
We overeat, or drink, and crave foods to change the way the feel. Anxiety, boredom, depression, fatigue and habit are common triggers. Some eat for entertainment, others to numb out, and still others stuff down nasty feelings.
Interestingly, a bad day probably has less to do with a binge than your biochemistry. Stress may trigger eating, but beneath the angst is a biochemical imbalance. That makes food and supplements among your best remedies for finding balance and controlling appetite.
If it were all in our heads, psychotherapy would be the cure. I have counseled more than a few obese therapists in my career. In traveling and studying other cultures and their eating habits, I’ve learned many people, despite challenging lives, don’t associate stress with extra large pizzas or bags of potato chips as so many Americans do.
What drives us so off course with our eating? Often, it’s the American diet. Many Americans are still influenced by the low-fat myth, others avoid meat and still others live on packaged processed foods. Low-fat foods, insufficient meat and processed foods (especially artificial sweeteners) are all sources of imbalance behind emotionally-driven eating.
Do you have a big appetite, and love meal time? Do you enjoy salty, rich foods? You probably need more protein than those more blasee about food. Not just any kind of protein will work. You need purine-rich dark poultry, organ meats including liver, and fatty cuts of red meat.
Do you overeat when tense or tired? Do you crave chips and other fried foods? You may not be getting enough fat. According to reports in the Lancet and the British Journal of Nutrition, low fat diets leave us angry, tense, anxious and tired, the most common emotional triggers to eat!
Add more real butter to your vegetables, oatmeal and rice. Snack on fresh nuts. Load your salad with avocado and olive oil. Use whole dairy products, not low or non-fat and make sure they are from grass-fed sources.
Are you anxious and crave sweets and chocolate? You may need more magnesium, a key mineral for regulating blood sugar and producing serotonin, the happiness and satiety chemical. It’s missing in packaged foods and needs fat for absorption.
You may be impacted by lack of sunlight, by appetite-stimulants in food or a myriad of other factors. My next Top Tips Newsletter will bring you 10 tips for Stopping Overeating. What do you need to know around food choices and cravings? Share your questions and experiences here.
For help understanding and changing your eating or drinking patterns, join me in my upcoming teleclass: Unmet Needs Unwanted Weight. It starts next week. You’ll learn nutritional tools and Compassionate Communication skills to change your eating and drinking patterns.
Topics: Cravings, Overeating, Uncategorized |
August 21st, 2008 at 10:38 am
You are speaking to me with this blog. I could live on sweets alone. I have tried therapy, I understand most of my unmet needs and wants, but it doesn’t seem to help. Thank you for letting me know there is something else.
August 21st, 2008 at 5:38 pm
Dear Linda
I sometimes have cravings for food and I always thought they were result of anxiety or emotional needs and very hard to solve. I am glad to know that chemical imbalances are also the cause of those cravings and that the problem can be sorted with supplements and a proper diet.
Please send me the tips to stop overeating as well as more info about the chemical imbalances and their consequences.
Best Regards
Christine
August 21st, 2008 at 7:33 pm
I appreciate hearing from you Nan and Christine. You are both getting my 10 Tips for Stopping Overeating for sure. I am making a few revisions and should have it ready tomorrow. Thanks for being patient.
Nan, cravings for sweets can result from several nutrition-related issues. Low levels of chromium, magnesium and omega-3 fats play a big role. All these nutrients help normalize blood sugar and balance moods. The right foods have these nutrients but you’ll probably need supplements of each to make a difference.
Getting in more meat can help too. Animal protein can curb sugar cravings. My vegetarian clients end up with terrible sugar cravings. Grass fed meats offer you much needed omega-3 fats - stay with those.
Treating any yeast or candida infection is important too; do you get yeast infections or toe fungus infections? Systemic yeast can represent millions or billions of organisms that feed on sugar, making it seem you can’t live without your next sugar fix.
And then there’s sunlight. Be sure you are making adequate vitamin D for balanced brain chemistry by getting sun on your skin regularly.
Finally, get all those tempting treats OUT of the house. Out-of-sight-out-of-mind has some truth to it.
Give these a try and let me know what happens.
Chow,
Linda
August 24th, 2008 at 10:24 am
Yes, adding healthy fats to your diet plays such a tremendous role in controlling your appetite and can have a huge impact on overeating. Eating low fat is not satiating and makes your body yearn for more!
Starting your day off with fat at breakfast time is the key!! Sometimes I will put an extra pat of grass-fed butter (easier to find than you think-look at Linda’s recommendations above!) on my eggs and turkey sausage in the morning. You may think, “I don’t want to add the extra calories or fat,” but if what happens if you are not satisfied now by eating these good fats, you will eat hundreds more calories later and most likely it will be the bad fats, carbs and sugars.
Focus on what sugars and junk food does to the inside of your body rather than the outside for just a moment. The unhealthy fats and junk food just ages us, depletes our energy and makes us feel depressed. How do you want to feel?
Take little steps. Start off with a high protein, healthy fat-filled breakfast and watch your energy rise. Keep busy!!!! When we are bored, we turn to food to ‘keep us company’. Go outside to get your mail and just take a moment to stay out in the fresh air. Run an errand. Walk around your block. Organize that closet or drawer you have been looking at.
Change is possible. You can do it!! Don’t start a diet, just start a healthy lifestyle-plan….you will be so pleased with yourself…
Linda, I would love to see your Tips sheet and to see what you have new with this topic-your insight is amazing and……most of all, it works!!!!!!
August 24th, 2008 at 10:53 pm
Linda,
Thank you for addressing this topic. I have a very hard time balancing my diet. When I overeat on sweets, like clockwork I overeat on salty foods later that day or the next day. Are the saturated fats in the meat and butter a concern? What portion sizes do you recommend to help balance the body’s chemicals.
Thank you so mcuh!
August 25th, 2008 at 3:20 pm
Bridget:
Yes, the sweets do send us to the opposite, salt - like yin and yang, we like salt to balance sweet. The biggest trick is to stop the cravings for sweets. Start there. See my web site for how to do that.
Grass-fed meats are a healthy, low-fat food, and some of that fat is omega-3, the heart-healthy, fat-burning kind. Eating more of it will help you naturally size your portions and reduce your cravings for sweets.
As for butter, if grass fed, it is also healing. Don’t worry about the saturates of butter. Harvard recently found that in women eating more saturated fat reduces plaque in arteries, the kind you really don’t want. It is the fat of choice in France and Switzerland, two of the longest lived countries. It is rich in healing short and medium chain fats (which don’t get stored as fat like vgetable oils do), lots of vitamin A and E, and lutein and zeaxanthin, powerful antiosidants, especially for the eyes. See my article on butter for more:
http://www.lindaprout.com/articles/Butter.php
We tend to find our ideal portions by getting enough protein and good fats. Also if you make sure you are getting at least two cups of lightly cooked vegetables for at least two meals per day, you will find it hard to overeat the wrong foods.
August 27th, 2008 at 12:34 pm
Linda - Can you let me know where to find grass-fed butter? I went to Whole Foods and didn’t see it.
I drink too much wine…it is partly to lower stress (obviously, not a good choice), partly for the calories (I am hungry at 5:00, but no dinner for another hour and a half), and partly due to a habit.
My weight is relatively stable thanks to your tips about adding protein at lunch and more fat into my diet. But I want to become less dependent on that wine fix every day.
August 27th, 2008 at 4:00 pm
Karen:
Whole Foods has grass fed butter: Organic Pastures, Natural by Nature and the Irish butters (Kerrigold) are grass fed. Also see my Shopping Guide on my web site.
My best tip for reducing the wine is energy medicine. You need to do a couple rounds of EFT daily. This should only take 10 minutes or so. Do it on “this habit,” “this anxiety/stress,” and “this desire,” or “this urge.” But you need to do it daily for a month. 10 minutes total.
As for breaking the habit, try putting a tall glass of sparkling water in your hand when you would normally reach for the wine.
August 27th, 2008 at 10:51 pm
Even though I do eat basically very healthy foods, I do overeat at times. The habit angle is a big part of that as it is always at dinner. I never overeat during the day. Part of the dinner issue is simply because I just love to cook and love to eat the good food I make!
Wills last blog post..How Green Is Your Cat?
August 30th, 2008 at 2:31 pm
Linda,
I love enjoying the grass fed better you have suggested-it is so filling and very satisfying!
I have found a brand spelled Kerrygold Irish butter…is this the same thing? Thanks again Linda for your extraordinary knowledge…
October 1st, 2008 at 10:25 am
What a relief to read so many ways to eat healthfully. I would add that savoring food, chewing a lot, and playing with it with the tongue to uncover hidden waives of flavors and variations of texture as solids dissolve into more digestible liquidy stuff is a way to eat less and gain more pleasure. Eating more exuberantly in terms of quality can lead to much less need for volume to satisfy the sensual aspects of the food experience.
Bon Appetite, Craig.