Overeating and Your Brain’s Job

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Related Episodes:

• Overindulging Without the Regret
• Are You Using Food as an Escape?
• Boredom Eating

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Full Episode Transcript:

Overeating and Your Brain’s Job

Hi there, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for listening in on this episode today. If you suspect you overeat, or you know you overeat, you’re going to learn a lot in this one about why you do it, and some crucial steps to getting control of overeating.

Alright, so first I just want to explain that overeating sounds very subjective and maybe even can cause you to ask the question, “well at what point am I overeating?” or “what is overeating anyway?” Any time you put that word, “over” in front of any verb, it can always leave a bit of a question of just how much is too much.

Overeating is somewhat objective. Overeating means eating more calories than your body needs. More specifically, eating more calories in a day than your body burns that same day.

Now if you’re just talking numbers, then of course overeating can vary greatly, right? You could potentially only overeat by 50 calories a day, but if you do that every day, you will gain weight. So, if you’re trying NOT to gain weight, then even just overeating by that small amount could cause a negative effect, meaning the weight gain.

You could also overeat some days, undereat other days, and it would potentially cancel each other out, depending on several factors. You could of course also overeat by a lot one day a month and it does not cause much of an effect, maybe other than a stomach ache.

But most likely if you’re listening to this podcast episode, you feel that your overeating is a problem for you that you wish you could resolve. And that’s why I decided to do this episode, to help you.

Okay so, there are two large reasons why people overeat. That’s either over-hunger or over-desire. Now, of course, these are not the ONLY reasons, but these two things will put you at greater risk of overeating, okay?

Also, there are also a lot of underlying reasons behind those two main reasons, but that would be getting into the nitty gritty and we don’t need to get into the nitty gritty here. You just need to understand over-hunger and over-desire for now, because those are two biggies and if you understand these then you will be well on your way to getting control of overeating.

Just a note, I am going to talk about another big one with you, that sort of falls into the over-desire category a little bit, but not completely. I’ll share that one with you toward the end though, so stay tuned.

Alright, over-hunger means being overly hungry of course. It’s more physical and has more to do with your body and the hunger signals it’s getting. Over-desire is a feeling that is caused by a thought. Yes, desire is a feeling. And this has something to do with that third category I mentioned.

Over-hunger is more than just the average hunger signals. It’s when you’re to the point where you’re starting to feel more uncomfortable hunger signals, or even feel “hangry.” If you don’t know that term yet, you’re welcome, it’s a good one. It just means that you’re so hungry that you’re starting to feel irritable or angry.

Have you ever gotten that way? I have. I don’t let myself get overly hungry just because I know it can lead to overeating AND it doesn’t feel good. However, if I do experience over-hunger occasionally, I’ll start getting moody if I’m overly hungry and I’ll mention like 5 times that I’m hungry, as if my husband Paul didn’t hear me the first time.

Now, once you get to that point of over-hunger, you are feeling uncomfortable, right? You might have a headache, or even feel nauseous like I do. You might have intense stomach grumbling or growling. You might even feel shaky or clammy or faint. You get the idea. I’m sure you know exactly how you feel when you’re overly hunger because it’s typically intense.

So, your brain was developed to avoid pain or discomfort, so it naturally wants that discomfort to go away. That means, it wants those intense hunger signals to go away and go away quickly. What’s the easiest way to do that? The first sight of food that looks halfway decent, you’re going to want to eat and eat a lot of. The primary thing your brain is thinking is to get food in your body, so those uncomfortable hunger signals subside.

This means the more primitive part of the brain takes over. The part that is motivated to avoid that discomfort. Rather than the more future-focused part of the brain, the pre-frontal cortex. The pre-frontal cortex is the part that tells you that you shouldn’t eat chocolate cake for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It’s like the “adult” part of the brain. It’s more reasonable and has your health and best interests in mind, especially for the future.

So, when the more primitive part of your brain takes over and you see food when you’re overly hungry, you will tend to care less about what that food is, meaning if it’s healthy or unhealthy. Your brain is just wired to want to eat the food regardless. That is what drives the behavior or action of eating the food. So how come you can end up overeating?

I just want to clarify one thing before I answer this. Being overly hunger doesn’t mean that every single time experience intense hunger signals, you overeat. It just highly increases the likelihood. As I mentioned earlier, it’s just one of the two main causes of overeating.

Okay, so once you find food when you’re overly hunger, and you’re able to eat the food, meaning it’s available to you, your brain releases dopamine. Dopamine is the reward hormone, so a release of it gives you a pleasurable feeling.

Researchers discovered that when you find food, you get a release in dopamine AND when you eat the food, you get further release of dopamine. All encouraging you to want to find more food when hungry and eat the phone.

This of course is all a purposeful design, so that humans, and really all animals, can survive. We need to be motivated and encouraged to eat food to survive.

So, when you find food that is available to you to eat when you’re overly hungry, your dopamine levels will really increase. Then on top of that, when you eat the food, the levels will increase more, letting your brain know you’re doing a good thing for survival.

Now, your brain thinks you’re doing a good thing for survival, because of course, back in the day, if you were overly hungry and found food and ate a lot of it, that was great! Who knows when your next meal would be.

These days, we don’t have to worry about that so much with food being readily available.

I used to get overly hungry working in the OR, especially when I was assisting in spine surgery. Those surgeries could be multiple hours long and usually went through lunch, sometimes even dinner. I would be so hungry sometimes when we finished say a 5 hour-long surgery, that my brain was screaming at me to get some food.

I would have to write orders and make sure the patient was doing okay before I would eat, so by the time I got to the surgeon’s lounge and saw all the individually-wrapped peanut butter containers and crackers, I would grab a handful of each and just scarf them down, not paying any attention to calories or if I even needed to eat all of them to satisfy my hunger.

I wouldn’t even give my body a chance to let that hunger hormone, ghrelin, let me know if I was still hungry after just a couple crackers dipped in peanut butter. I just wanted ALL the peanut butter and crackers at that moment, so those intense hunger signals would go away.

And believe me, I think peanut butter is great, but have you ever looked at the calories in a serving size? It’s more than you’d think. So, I was definitely not even thinking about the amount of calories I was eating, which if I’m not worried about weight gain is fine, but if I’m trying to not gain weight, or if I’m trying to lose weight, then overeating without thinking about what or how much I’m eating, will definitely sabotage me, just as it will sabotage you and your efforts if you’re not aware or being purposeful of what or how much you’re eating.

So, as I mentioned just a few minutes ago, these days, we don’t need to overeat when we’re overly hungry because food is readily available.

Our brains were already programmed though, which is why you may find yourself overeating when you don’t necessarily need to for survival.

So, really important here. Your brain was already programmed to eat a lot of food when you’re overly hungry. Your brain is just trying to keep you alive. It’s doing its main job. Meaning, there isn’t something “wrong” with you if you overeat. There’s nothing wrong with your brain or your ability. It’s just purely a natural human brain thing, okay? Like I said, it’s doing its job. You WANT your brain to do its job of keeping you alive. Even though I know you don’t necessarily want it to cause you to over-eat to the point that it causes you discomfort or weight gain, etc.

Alright, so now that you know why your brain was programmed to overeat when you’re overly hungry, now it’s just a matter of overriding that more primitive action with the more advanced part of the brain, that pre-frontal cortex, which I’ll show you how to start doing in this episode, and what I help career women do in Food Freedom if you want more extensive help with your overeating.

I have to wait a little bit before I tell you how to stop because I need to explain the other main cause of overeating, which is over-desire. So, over-desire just means you strongly desire the food you’re eating. Like strongly desire it or crave it or have an urge to eat it. I use all those terms interchangeably.

Over-desire can occur when you crave something so badly, you resist and fight against the urge, but it just gets stronger, and you give in and then overeat whatever it is that you desired.

Or, you can have an intense craving for something, eat it and it’s SO delicious and provides such a large surge of dopamine that your brain says, “wow, I’ve gotta have more of that!” It’s like a hyper-intense reaction to the food itself.

So, you can either have over-desire from fighting an urge, and by fighting it you’re causing the urge or craving or desire to intensify, leading to overeating once you do give in.  Or, you can have over-desire from receiving such a large reward from the food, which then creates a desire to have more of that food, often leading to overeating. Really sugar-y foods tend to do this because sugar naturally causes a large release of dopamine.

Now, I do want to mention that overeating can also occur with emotional eating. That’s that third category I mentioned at the beginning. The third big reason why you might be overeating. By emotional eating I mean if you’re experiencing an emotion and you eat in response to the emotion. Like I mentioned at the beginning of the episode, this doesn’t quite fall into the category of over-hunger and only somewhat falls into the category of over-desire. Sometimes emotional eating is over-desire, but sometimes it’s not quite over-desire, it’s just a response to the emotion. It can end up creating over-desire though, because your brain sees the reward it gets. I’ll explain.

So, with emotional eating, often that means eating in response to a negative emotion to make that discomfort from the negative emotion go away. It can also mean eating in response to a positive or even a more neutral emotion as well. I’m going to use negative emotion as the example though. So, when you emotionally eat, your brain is trying to escape the discomfort from the negative emotion, by getting a little bit of pleasure from the food. Sometimes it’s purely the food itself, sometimes it can even be pleasure from the action of eating.

Your brain gets that little dopamine hit, remember that’s the reward hormone. Your brain then says, “oh, that food made me feel better” which can then create a desire to eat that food again when you experience another negative emotion, but especially if you experience that same negative emotion. Done often enough, this can intensify that desire over time. Potentially, leading to an over-desire to eat to make that negative emotion go away.

Make sense?

Okay, so how do you start getting control of that overeating?

Like I mentioned earlier, getting your pre-frontal cortex involved, instead of letting that more primitive brain be in control is key. A very important first step is to think about the last time you overate and determine the cause. Was it that you were overly hungry? Did you over-desire that food because you were fighting the urge or craving so much that it just intensified the desire? Or did you overeat in response to an emotion, other than desire of course? So, either a negative emotion, or any other emotion, a neutral one or a positive one.

It’s much easier to determine the cause when you can think back to the most recent time you overate. You have a specific situation to investigate. If you’re able to think back to another time you overate, do the same thing. Ask yourself what you were feeling? Was it intense hunger, intense desire, both? Was it a negative emotion causing a desire?

Start collecting data. Then, going forward, any time you’ve eaten more than you intended, just ask yourself what the reason was. That’s really just the first thing I want you to do. Collect some data so you can see what your tendencies are. Once you start getting this awareness, it makes getting control SO much easier. You start seeing the cause and effect, rather than feeling like it’s just automatic or habitual and something you won’t be able to get control of.

So then once you start collecting a little data, when you do eat, especially a larger meal like dinner or if you snack a lot, then before you go for seconds, ask yourself, “am I really hungry still?” if you found that over-hunger was your main cause of overeating.

Or, if you found that over-desire was your main cause, then ask yourself, “Is this just a really intense craving right now because I’m trying to fight it?” And if you found that a different emotion or emotions tend to be the cause, then just pause and ask yourself if you’re eating in response to the emotion.

Just giving yourself that pause and asking yourself a question, means you’re not just acting automatically. You’re getting your pre-frontal cortex involved and you’re putting a little pause between the trigger and the action of eating. It allows you the opportunity to choose, to be deliberate, rather than just acting automatically. When you just act automatically, you don’t really feel like you’re in control.

If you’re catching onto your brain though by taking that moment to ask yourself the question, you’re giving yourself the chance to make a choice.

Another thing I always recommend doing is making it difficult to eat more of whatever it is you’re trying to limit your portion of. So putting the food in a spot that you’re less likely to easily be able to reach without having to get up. So, consider putting it in a Tupperware after you’ve taken some, and putting that Tupperware away immediately.

Or, if it’s a snack, consider putting several pieces of tape across the opening of the bag or box, so it’s more difficult to access, and then stick it in the back of the pantry. These little steps just make it a little less likely that you’ll lose control. They create that bit of time and effort just to get more of that food, making it a little less likely to overeat.

Okay, so you’ve learned why overeating in response to over-hunger and over-desire are so common and that it’s a normal human response. There’s nothing wrong with you if you overeat. Your brain is just doing its job. You can even think of it this way, it’s doing its job maybe better than you want it to, right? So, if you need further help with this, I am here.

Thanks so much for joining me in this podcast episode. Check out the one on emotional eating on the episode page and I’m linking a couple more that are related.

Alright, take care, thanks for listening and I’ll talk with you soon.