5 reasons why you overeat

Overeat --> gain weight.

Seems to be fairly common knowledge nowadays, so why do we do it?

Here's a brief overview of the top five reasons why people overeat.

1. You're eating the wrong types of foods 🍩

Your body's system for regulating hunger and fullness is incredibly outdated 🦕 and unable to deal with all the calorie-dense, hyper-palatable foods that are now available 🍔🍫🍪

If all you ate were minimally processed whole foods with only natural seasonings like herbs and spices, it would be incredibly tough to overeat in a single sitting.

Five hundred calories of chicken, veg and rice 🍗🥦🍚 would:

• Take you a while to eat

• Be reasonably easy to turn down seconds, and

• Keep you feeling full for several hours!

In contrast, 500 calories wouldn't even cover your portion of fries at Five Guys! 🍟

That's just one of the thousands of examples of how easy it is to consume a LOT of calories from highly-processed foods in a single sitting and STILL FEEL HUNGRY soon after 🤤

2. You're not calorie-aware 🙈

Calorie awareness is one of the many lessons we should have been taught in school but weren't 👨‍🏫

If you don't know...

• The calorie counts of your favourite foods⚡️, or

• How many calories your body needs to lose, maintain and gain weight 📉

Then you're 1,000,000 x more likely to overeat.

Side note: I firmly believe that if calorie awareness were on the national curriculum, we'd stand a fighting chance at reigning in the obesity epidemic #JT-4-PRIME-MINISTER?! 👀

3. Your environment is sabotaging you 😒

I know we all like to think of ourselves as being independent minded free-spirits 💃, but a lot of overeating is caused by external triggers in your environment.

For example:

• Being unable to walk 20m down your high street without passing a food store or cafe 🛒

• Having kitchen cupboards full of tempting foods readily available at home 🍫🍿🍪

• Being offered food by somebody when you otherwise wouldn't have eaten.

• Dining out with friends not known for making diet-friendly choices 🕺💃

• And the list goes on...

The reality is that we live in what the UK's National Institute for Health and Care Excellence has called an 'obesogenic environment' - I LOVE that word!

4. You’re eating your emotions 😭

The primary role of food is to provide your body with energy and nutrients; a job it's perfectly well-equipped to perform ✅

But the problems start when you treat food like your therapist 🛋 or best friend 📞, i.e. emotional eating.

Emotional eating is when you use food to soothe, distract or avoid negative emotions like boredom, uncertainty, sadness and loneliness.

And who does that with a chicken salad? 🥗

5. You're sleep deprived 😴

Research has shown that sleep deprivation increases your brain's responsiveness to food 🧠 and impairs your decision making --> AKA: a perfect storm for overeating 🌩

I know from personal experience that if I have a terrible night's sleep, I'm a lot more likely to say 'WTF’ with my diet the next day 🙈

I mean, who binges in the morning after eight hours of quality sleep?💤