YOUR QUESTIONS ANSWERED
Overeating: Why You Eat More Than You Need & How to Change That
If you snack often, overdo it with sweets, eat past comfortable, or even binge eat, you’re not alone.
Here are answers to some of the most common questions I get about overeating.
What is Overeating?
Overeating means eating more food than your body needs or more than feels physically comfortable.
It can happen occasionally, or it can become a recurring pattern that leaves you feeling overly full, uncomfortable, or frustrated with yourself.
Sometimes overeating happens because you really enjoy the food, you’re distracted, or you’re eating too fast. Sometimes you’re eating because you’re stressed, bored, tired, or looking for comfort (emotional eating).
And sometimes you’re simply very hungry because you haven’t eaten enough earlier in the day.
A useful question is whether it’s happening often, whether it feels difficult to control, and whether you’re unhappy with the pattern.
Why Do I Overeat?
You may overeat for many different reasons, including physical hunger, eating too little earlier in the day, stress, boredom, fatigue, emotional triggers, habits, or simply being surrounded by highly enjoyable food.
There isn’t one single cause of overeating, and most people overeat every once in awhile.
You might skip lunch because you’re busy and then find yourself eating everything in sight at dinner. Or maybe you eat normally all day but start snacking as soon as you sit down at night.
The problem isn’t the food itself or a lack of self-control. It’s the pattern surrounding the food.
Understanding when, where, and why you tend to overeat is usually more helpful than simply trying to eat less.
Overeating isn’t a food or self-control problem.
There’s always a logical reason behind it.
Why Do I Keep Eating When I’m Full?
You may keep eating after you’re physically full because fullness isn’t always enough to stop you from eating.
Habits, highly enjoyable food, distraction, emotions, and not wanting to ‘waste’ food can all keep you eating.
You may recognize this as, “I’m actually full, but I don’t want to stop.”
Maybe there’s still food on your plate or dessert sounds really good. Maybe you’re watching TV and barely noticing how much you’re eating.
This doesn’t necessarily mean you don’t recognize fullness. You may recognize it perfectly well and still have a reason to continue eating.
That’s an important distinction, because the solution isn’t always “learn to listen to your fullness cues.” Sometimes you need to understand what is making you want to keep eating even though you’re already full.
Why Can’t I Stop Eating?
If you feel like you can’t stop eating, it may be because eating has become an automatic pattern rather than a conscious decision.
The urge to continue eating can be influenced by habit, emotions, restriction, environment, or the anticipation of pleasure from food.
This is why telling yourself to “just stop” often doesn’t work very well.
You may know exactly what you want to do and still find yourself reaching for another serving, another handful, or another bite.
That doesn’t mean you have no willpower. It means the overeating has become a habit, and habits can be broken by interrupting them and creating a new habit.
Overeating isn’t out of your control.
It just feels like it is. That can change.
Why Do I Overeat When I’m Not Hungry?
You may overeat when you’re not hungry because eating isn’t always driven by physical hunger.
Food can also be triggered by habits, emotions, tiredness, burnout, social situations, or simply seeing or thinking about food.
You might walk into the kitchen because you’re bored and start snacking. Or open a bag of chips while working and realize you’ve eaten half of it without really deciding to.
You might finish dinner and still want something sweet even though you’re physically full from dinner.
When this happens, getting curious about what made it happen is useful data and the first step to changing it.
Why Do I Overeat at Night?
Nighttime overeating can happen because of eating too little during the day, stress and other emotions, fatigue, habit, or finally having time to relax and after a demanding day.
For many busy and high-achieving women, nighttime is when the day finally stops.
You’ve worked, taken care of everyone else, made decisions all day. And now you’re sitting on the couch with a little time to yourself.
Food can become part of that transition from “I’m responsible for everything” to “I’m finally off.”
And if you’ve also been restricting food during the day, your body may have a biological reason to be hungry at night.
If nighttime overeating is a pattern for you, don’t just focus on what you’re eating after dinner. Look at the entire day that came before it.
Why Do I Overeat After Dieting?
You may overeat after dieting because restriction can leave you physically hungry, mentally preoccupied with food, or feeling like certain foods are temporarily off-limits.
That can make eating more difficult to regulate when the restriction ends.
This is one reason the cycle of “diet → restrict → overeat → feel guilty → start another diet” can be so frustrating.
You may think the overeating proves you need more control, so you try to control more, which keeps the cycle going.
If you’ve spent years trying to control your eating, the answer isn’t another diet or more control. You need to change your relationship with food instead.
The key to understanding overeating at night is understanding what happened during your day.
How Do I Stop Overeating?
You can stop overeating by understanding the situations that trigger it, eating in a way that supports physical hunger, and changing the thought and behavior patterns that keep the habit going.
The best first step is to understand what’s driving the overeating so you can start responding differently.
When do you tend to overeat? What happened beforehand? Were you hungry? Stressed? Tired? Restricting? Bored? Looking for a break?
Then you learn how to respond differently to each, consistenly enough that it changes the patterns.
The goal isn’t to become someone who never overeats. Everyone occasionally eats more than they intended.
The goal is to stop feeling like overeating is something that happens to you over and over again.
How Do I Stop Overeating Without Dieting?
You can stop overeating without following another restrictive diet by focusing on your eating patterns, physical hunger and satisfaction, your beliefs, and the situations that trigger you to eat more than you intended.
That doesn’t mean you have to stop caring about what you eat or how much you eat. It means you’re addressing what’s underneath those. Plus, have compassion for yourself in the process.
Then, it’s much easier to naturally eat when hungry and stop when satisfied or mildly full. No restriction, rules, or relying on willpower.
What’s the Difference Between Overeating and Binge Eating?
Overeating means eating more than you intended or more than feels physically comfortable, while binge eating involves recurrent episodes of eating a large amount of food with a sense of loss of control, along with other specific symptoms.
Occasionally eating too much does not mean you have binge eating disorder.
Binge eating disorder is a clinical eating disorder with specific diagnostic criteria, including recurrent binge episodes and significant distress or impairment.
If you regularly experience episodes of feeling unable to control your eating and are concerned about them, it’s worth talking with a mental health professional.
For many people, though, the issue is somewhere else: they’re tired of overeating and want to understand why it keeps happening.
That’s a habit pattern that can be explored and changed without labeling yourself or beating yourself up.
Here’s your next step to stop overeating:
Start with a free consult to understand more of your patterns and get a clear roadmap of what it takes to break this habit for good.
It’ll save you time, energy, and frustration, and you’ll be well on your way to being the person who no longer overeats manages her weight easily.