Causes of Over Eating
Overeating is simple to do in today's society. All too often, you ignore the feeling of being full in favor of an extra slice of pie at Thanksgiving or rewarding yourself for a job well done by having a cookie. Once overeating develops into a habit, it becomes hard to break. However, identify the reasons behind overeating, and you are well on the way to breaking it.
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Emotional Eating
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Eating when bored is a common cause of overeating. Watching television, especially on your own, can lead to foraging in the fridge, even though you may have finished dinner an hour or so before. If you are feeling sad, lonely or deprived, you turn to food for that sense of comfort that you are missing. Food fills a void. Other emotions that may cause overeating are stress, feeling upset or hurt or having disgust for your own body. Find a different way to deal with your emotions, talk to your friends or family or take up exercise.
Habit
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Overeating can be a habit learned from early days when your parents encouraged you to eat everything that was on your plate. They offered dessert as a reward when you finished your calorie-laden dinner, acclimatizing you to something sweet after something savory. It's easy to develop your own habits: for example, every morning stopping off for a cappuccino and a doughnut to take to work, or coming home and going straight to the fridge. Break your routine to stop eating the food you've built into it.
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Mindless Eating
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This can stack on the weight -- that endless picking from the children's plate or eating your breakfast while reading a book; grazing while you are making the dinner, so that by the time you sit down to eat it, you are already half-full; choosing a dessert because someone else ordered one; having another glass of wine just to finish off the bottle. All of these contribute to empty calories and take a lot of the enjoyment out of eating that dessert. Become more aware of what you put in your mouth and listen to your body.
The Science Behind Overeating
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Researchers at the U.S. Brookhaven National Laboratory have found that the left posterior amygdala in the brain controls the feeling of fullness, and a hormone called ghrelin stimulates feelings of hunger and causes short-term satiety. The Brookhaven study found that overweight people had less activation of this part of the brain than normal-weight people and rarely reported satiety when their stomachs were moderately full. People with high instances of ghrelin also triggered the amygdala more often.
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References
Resources
- Photo Credit eating apple #6 image by Adam Borkowski from Fotolia.com
