How to Stop Overeating

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Full Episode Transcript:

How to Stop Overeating

Hi there, welcome to the podcast. Today, I’m going to dive into how to stop overeating. First, it’s important to clarify what the actual reasons are that you overeating.

Then, I’m going to jump into the solutions to overeating and then the actual process of how to stop overeating. Next, we will cover the benefits of stopping overeating. They are in addition to weight loss and may not have occurred to you.

And finally, I’m going to give you a mindset shift for those pesky thoughts that you may be having about you are over eating.

The mindset shift will help you to think and feel better. If you are feeling better, you’re more likely to have success with the actions to then get the result that you want.

So don’t miss that at the end.

Alright, so you’ve likely been told that consuming more calories than your body burns causes weight gain. There’s more to the story than that though.

In this episode, I’m talking about both overeating at one sitting and overeating for the whole day. Meaning, eating more calories than your body needs.

OK, so it’s very common to think that the problem with overeating is you in particular. That there’s something wrong with you. That you can’t control yourself and that means something negative about you as a person.

This is actually false. The real problem when it comes to overeating comes down to a few things. Two big ones are over-hunger and over-desire. Two other things are mindless eating and then also our thoughts.

Let’s touch on overhunger first. So normally, your brain signals to you that it may be time to eat by giving you hunger signals. Part of this is due to the hormone ghrelin.

After you’ve eaten, your brain then tells you that it no longer needs food. This is when grehlin decreases and leptin increases. Leptin is the fullness or satiety hormone. It lets you know that you’ve had enough.

When hunger goes unanswered, sometimes it can build and become over hunger. Then it feels urgent and very uncomfortable. This can lead to overeating because we think we need to eat as quickly and as much as possible. This is a normal human reaction.

There are also other things that can cause over hunger a feeling of over hunger, but you’re not truly overly hungry. A large one is processed and packaged foods. Specifically, foods that are processed into flour or contain sugar. So things like crackers, breads, pretzels, cookies.

These foods mess around with those hormone levels. This is in part due to insulin.

Other things that can lead to over hunger are lack of sleep, dehydration and even stress has been linked to this as well due to another hormone, cortisol.

Now about over desire. Over desire is when you’ve gone from thinking that a cookie looks good and you’d like to eat one, to having to have one now.

This is when people can feel out of control.

What’s going on here though, is we get to the point of over desire because of the foods that are available.

Foods with a lot of sugar, flour, salt, and even fried foods, will cause a very large release of dopamine and cause you to feel significant pleasure.

This is actually a built in survival mechanism that we’ve had for many many years, but now it is unfortunately harming us.

Companies know how the human brain and body works and take big advantage of that to make more money.

Also part of this whole over desire and dopamine process is our desire as humans to avoid uncomfortable emotions.

Examples include anxiety, boredom, sadness, stress, frustration, and loneliness. Also urges and cravings. So, when we feel an uncomfortable emotion, our brain remembers that certain foods bring pleasure. This seems like a good idea in the moment.

This feeds a vicious cycle though. You feel an uncomfortable emotion and eat food in response. You eat something that gives a big dopamine hit, like sugar and flour do, and also salty or fatty foods.

Your brain and body get used to that. So, they start to over-desire these foods. The foods give pleasure and help you escape negative emotions. This is a normal human brain response.

It has been happening because of the foods we have and because we’re never taught how to manage our emotions well. So you can see, that neither one of these things are any fault of yours.

 Now let’s talk about mindless eating. Mindless or distracted eating means eating while doing something else. It often causes overeating because it’s unconscious or habitual eating. You’re unaware, on autopilot.

So if you’re completely unaware of it, how are you able to monitor when you’ve had enough?

And typically, people don’t mindlessly eat things like broccoli. They eat things like crackers, pretzels, and chips.

Those are those foods that mess around with the hunger and satiety hormones. Making it more likely that you’re going to eat those foods, then if you were mindlessly eating something like broccoli.

And then that 4th cause of overeating is our own thoughts. Thoughts that are not serving you or are not true, also known as thought errors.

An example of this is many of us are taught as a kid to eat everything on your plate. We bring this thought into adulthood.

We’re so used to finishing all the food on the plate. But, this often means overeating. Especially since portion sizes gotten larger over the years. You probably notice this even more with going out to eat.

 OK, So what are the solutions and then we’ll dive into how to stop overeating. The solutions are to decrease over-hunger, decrease over-desire, increase mindful eating and address the thoughts that lead to overeating.

So here’s the process of how to stop overeating. These are the ways that I help my clients at least.

With over hunger, we make sure to plan ahead. Prepare so that you don’t have those really long periods of time where you are going to become overly hungry.

That way, hunger doesn’t start becoming urgent to the point you don’t even care what you eat or how much.

Also, decreasing flour and sugar, since those are the two big culprits for leading to over hunger and then overeating. Some people say to eliminate them completely for the rest of your life.

Unless someone wants to actually do that, that’s not how I help my clients decrease it. I’d much rather help them decrease them in a very doable way that they feel they can easily sustain.

Also, increasing hydration, making sure you’re getting adequate sleep and have good sleep habits, and decreasing stress can help treat that over hunger. Because it helps to normalize or balance those hormones.

Here’s how to address the over-desire part of it. Decreasing those processed foods — the ones with flour and sugar — helps. It lessens the big, drastic spikes in dopamine and thus the desire.

Also, because you’re doing that, you don’t get as many cravings anymore. When we have those big dopamine spikes and then drops that’s when you get a craving. And the more sugar and flour you eat, the more intense the cravings are.

Also, you’re going to need to learn to get more comfortable with urges and other emotions. There are always going to be things that cause emotions in your life. We can’t get rid of negative emotion. We have to have negative emotion to know what positive emotion feels like.

When you are overeating to avoid those negative emotions, you’re teaching your body how to NOT feel emotions. This means that you may not be feeling those positive emotions very much anymore either.

So, learning to feel your emotions, including urges and cravings, helps you to get through any negative emotion. It breaks the link between feeling the bad feeling and the urge to escape it with food. It also helps you to feel positive emotions better.

Once you are able to process your emotions, which includes the desire or urge to eat the cupcake or the chips, that over-desire decreases.

Another tool or skill to help you stop overeating is to decrease that mindless eating by making a habit of eating more mindfully. So no distractions, and actually paying attention to what you’re eating and how much you’re eating.

Part of this is also to include intuitive eating and be aware of your hunger and fullness.

And finally, your thoughts will help you stop overeating. Finding the obvious thoughts, but also the sneaky thoughts that you may not even realize are causing you to overeat. They oftentimes have to do with things we learned in childhood, but also they tend to have to do with other people. Think people pleasing.

Many times we think these thoughts are the truth and they’re not. Or if we’re not even aware of certain thoughts causing overeating, it’s eye opening when we can pull some of these thoughts to the surface. And then there’s lots of different things you can do with those thoughts.

Besides the more obvious benefits of stopping overeating, like feeling more in control and having healthier eating habits, and weight management, there are others.

You normalize that whole hunger fullness cycle by normalizing those hormones. Or rebalancing them, however you want to call it. So then it’s much easier to lose weight and maintain it so that you don’t regain it.

Also, dopamine decreases to more normal levels, because you are not eating as many foods that have such a drastic effect on dopamine.

Now some people might think “well I want to get a big pleasure from food.” But do you really? Are those negative effects that you’re experiencing from that really worth it?

Also, since you’re no longer getting all your pleasure from food, other parts of your life start feeling better, more enjoyable.

Think about it. If you get these big spikes in dopamine, the other things in your life that gave less of a spike start to feel insignificant compared to the sugar.

So, now we take away the big spikes in dopamine by taking away some or all of the sugar, if that’s what you want.

Then, the other things in your life that also give pleasure will be more noticeable again. And you can focus your energies on that. Rather than the struggle with overeating and the struggle with food and over desire.

Another big benefit to my process that I laid out for you is that you gain a better understanding of your emotions and they’re easier to manage. And you’re not making them worse.

Every time you eat to escape an emotion, that emotion just stays buried and kind of builds and builds over time. It doesn’t actually make the emotion better.

I found this to definitely be the case when I was emotionally eating due to anxiety and stress. My anxiety and stress increased overtime and I didn’t understand why until I stopped emotionally eating.

Also, some people are fearful about experiencing those emotions and seeing what emotions come up for them, but what I want to say is this.

Those emotions will stay buried and build and have a negative effect on you overall. Unless we allow them to come to the surface, they’ll constantly plague you, along with the thoughts that were causing the emotions in the 1st place.

One of the big fears is that we are going to be stuck with an emotion forever and we think that if we just ignore it, it’ll go away. It doesn’t though. If we let the emotion come up, then it can actually leave and be on its merry way.

One of the other nice benefits is that your confidence increases. Your confidence increases around food, because you can walk by the break room that has the doughnuts and not be drawn to them.

But also your confidence increases in general because you learn that skill of being able to feel any emotion.

So you can walk into any room with more confidence. You’re not fearful of being awkward or embarrassed or any of those other uncomfortable emotions. Because you know they’re just uncomfortable, you can totally do uncomfortable emotions.

And of course lots of other positive impacts on you and your life Besides just these results that I mentioned. They tend to branch off into other areas of your life, which is so fun.

Alright, and now for the mindset shift. So if you have a thought like I eat like a pig or I can’t stop overeating, those don’t feel good, right? And if they don’t feel good, then it’s gonna make it harder for you to do the actions you need to do to get the result That you want. The results of stopping overeating or maybe losing weight.

So instead, you can ask yourself if it’s possible that the opposite is true. Byron Katie, an author and thought-leader asks her clients to flip around the thought to the opposite and to consider that as your new thought.

Something that works great, but sometimes the opposite thought is not believable just yet. So I like to add in asking yourself if It’s possible that the opposite might be true.

So let’s take the thought I can’t stop overeating. The opposite of that would be I can stop overeating. So even if you don’t think that’s 100% true right now, ask yourself if you think it’s possible that you can stop overeating.

If yes, then your new thought could be “it’s possible I can stop overeating.”

Alright my career women, that was a lot, but if you are struggling with overeating, I can definitely help you. If you’re struggling with emotional eating or any “bad” eating habits, I can definitely help you.

Book a free consultation with me with the link in the episode description or right on my website at https://katemjohnston.com/consult. I’ll see what your unique challenges, goals and desires are, and then once I have a clear idea of what will help you, will share that with you.

You’ll feel so much clarity and belief that it really is possible for you. Never underestimate the power of those positive emotions.