11 things that make you overeat

Practicing nutritionist Elizaveta Gilman is convinced that in order not to overeat, you need to study yourself, carefully listen to the body's signals of hunger and satiety, eat regularly and find alternative ways problem solution. But first we need to find out what exactly pushes us to eat without measure.

Gilman lists these triggers in Make Peace with Food. How to forget about diets and switch to intuitive eating. It was published by Alpina Publisher. Lifehacker publishes an excerpt from the eighth chapter.

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1. Body and weight assessment

Hatred of yourself and your body is one of the most powerful factors influencing eating behavior and pushing to overeat. If normally self-esteem of people is based on different components - success in work, social status, sports, hobbies, family position and so on, self-esteem and self-esteem in a person with a disordered eating behavior is focused solely on weight and appearance. This can lead to obsessive weighting, unrealistic expectations of one's appearance and constant comparison of oneself with others, extreme eating behavior.

What place do different areas occupy in your life?

Exercise 1

Focusing on the diagrams of these two girls, draw a diagram that will display your life situation. How much space is occupied by family, figure, weight and nutrition, hobbies, friends, career etc? The diagram should reflect the current state of things, not your dreams of how it should be.

Analyze how big the “Shape, Weight, Nutrition” sector is in your chart? Is it bigger than other parts? If it takes up more than a third of the entire chart, you can say that you pay too much attention to the figure and nutrition.

If we attach great importance to our body and weight and evaluate them rigidly, this can greatly affect self-esteem.

Exercise 2

This exercise will help you understand how much your self-esteem is tied to your body image. Below, list the things on which you evaluate yourself as a person. What are you good at? What are yours relations with people, education, work, hobbies and so on?

Mark them by relative importance. What is the most important and what is not so important? Important things are likely to take more time and energy.

2. "I'm too fat!"

How many times have you exclaimed "I feel fat/fat!"? If too often to count, then you are not alone! This is typical for many girls and women and to a lesser extent for men. The intensity and frequency of a critical assessment of one's appearance is higher among those who have nutritional problems. But "fat" is not a feeling. Fat is not an emotion, it is a natural part of our body. When we feel fat, we most likely denote some other emotions and experiences in this way. For example, feelings of depression and loneliness, or the physical discomfort that comes with bloating, PMS, or a hangover. Often, when a person claims to feel fat, they are actually saying that they are uncomfortable in their body. Many women are ashamed of their weight, eating habits, eating habits and lack of any kind of sport in the schedule. “Feeling fat,” we actually feel ugly, unloved, unworthy, or lazy.

Exercise: how to understand how I really feel when I think "I'm fat"

Think what do you mean? Are you feeling heavy? Ugly? Unwanted?

What can happen if everything is as it seems to you? "No one will love me." What's next? "So I'll be forever alone or with 40 cats, which is scary."

Here! Behind the feeling "I'm fat" in this case lies fear. loneliness. You put pressure on your body to make other people love you. This is a completely justified and real fear. And in my opinion, one of the most powerful fears that affect eating behavior and a person’s relationship with his body.

The next time you feel fat, try to understand what you really mean by that. Replace the word "fat" with real feelings like fear, guilt, shame, anxiety, anger or loneliness. Understanding what is really bothering you is an important step in overcoming these feelings.

3. Weight gain

People who are concerned about their weight often react painfully to the slightest fluctuations. An increase of half a kilogram can cause a lot of negative emotions.

The standard reaction to an increase in the number on the scale for those who regularly overeat looks like this: another attempt to control food intake, malnutrition, and as a result, again a breakdown and binge eating.

I want to clarify right away: the weight always fluctuates a little during the day and from day to day - this is normal. These changes reflect the water balance, and not the state of the body fat. About 60% of our weight is water. So, if you weigh 70 kg, then 42 kg of them is water. The loss or gain of 0.5-1.5 kg is largely the result of a change in fluid balance. This circumstance is used by athletes who need to reach a certain weight for the competition. In people who abuse laxatives or diuretics, the water level fluctuates significantly and, as a result, body weight changes.

4. Diet

Paradoxically, diets play an important role in causing overeating. Many people who go on extreme diets, or at least try to do so, regularly overeat. This is a typical picture for a nervous bulimia and anorexia nervosa. Overeating is more likely to occur on days when a person decides to restrict themselves in food. Therefore, when solving the problem of overeating, it is extremely important to pay attention to whether a person is on a diet.

Exclusion of foods or entire food groups, fasting, limiting daily calories to 1,200 kcal, and sometimes 600 kcal, which are not can provide even the basic metabolic needs of the body - all this is a sure way to discover out of the blue myself by the fridge.

We’ve already talked about this: rules like “No carbs after six” or “Chocolate should be avoided as much as possible” are very difficult to follow in the long run. One day you will inevitably break them, there will be a “fuck it all” effect - if you ate one chocolate cookies, you can already swallow the whole pack - and tomorrow the cycle will start anew... This is how binge eating. As a result, you feel shame, guilt, and consider yourself worthless. You are very worried about how overeating will affect your weight. So you go on a diet again, even harder than last time. The cycle continues...

Exercise: how to tell if I'm on a diet

Answer the following questions:

• Am I deliberately limiting my food intake?
• Am I trying to follow some kind of diet or strict regimen?
• Do I try not to eat for long periods of time (more than four hours)?
• Do I have a limit on calories and amount of food?
• Am I avoiding certain foods that lead to weight gain?
• Is it typical for me, breaking the rule, to give up on everything and overeat?
• Does eating forbidden food cause a relapse?

If you answered “Yes” to most of the questions, then most likely you are on a diet.

My opinion is that you just need to solve the problem of permanent restrictions. Otherwise, you will remain prone to food breakdowns.

5. Breaking the rules

People who overeat are usually those who tend to control your life inside and out and keep yourself within tight limits. Whether it's a diet, a sports regime, harsh deadlines in the work process - whenever the order is violated for some reason, this becomes a trigger for an overeating attack.

6. Malnutrition and hunger

About once a week, Oksana arranges “fasting days” for herself. The point is to not eat anything for exactly a day, but somewhere from noon she begins to be overcome by thoughts about food, in the second half day they become stronger, and at about five o'clock in the evening Oksana can no longer concentrate on work and goes to work. score. She is so hungrythat they are simply not able to buy some kind of balanced set of products. The girl grabs everything that comes to hand, and hastily eats even what she doesn’t really like.

It turns out like in the Minnesota "hungry" experiment: malnutrition and the hunger associated with it exert powerful physical and psychological pressure on a person. Once the meal starts, it is difficult to stop it - and there is an episode of overeating.

7. Unpleasant emotions

Many reasons can provoke overeating. Sadness, longing, feeling of loneliness, tension, stress and anxiety, cravings for certain foods are just a short list of factors that have a direct impact on eating behavior. Sadness is a particularly powerful trigger. At such moments, you are more vulnerable and it becomes more difficult to follow the rules. Uncontrolled absorption of food can begin when you are tired, upset about something, feel emotional stress, emptiness. Treats are neurobiologically uplifting, so using them to balance your mood is a good idea. But ideally, a person should have other ways and mechanisms of regulation of emotions that do not lead to overeating. After all, the trouble is that the feelings that you "stuck" are replaced by feelings of guilt and shame.

8. Loneliness

Binge eating attacks mostly occur secretly - this is an important feature. Thus, loneliness increases the likelihood of relapses. At the same time, the risk is even greater if a person is not only at home alone, but, in principle, alone.

9. No plan for the day

The lack of a daily routine makes some people prone to overeating, while a routine or plan can be a kind of talisman against compulsive eating. Lack of a plan can also be accompanied by feelings of boredom, which triggers overeating.

10. PMS

Many women find it especially difficult to control their diet a few days before monthly. First of all, this is due to the active increase in the level of the hormone progesterone, which stimulates appetite. However, the cause may also be a general emotional state, irritability, dissatisfaction with one's body - for example, a bloated stomach.

11. Alcohol

Alcohol is an almost universal overeating trigger. First, it reduces our ability to resist impulsive desires - it becomes easier than ever to forget about the rules. Which of us, after a couple of glasses of wine with friends, did not order a frying pan of potatoes with meat instead of a light salad? Secondly, alcohol impairs the ability to adequately perceive the situation. We underestimate how bad we can feel if we break the rules. Moreover, alcohol is a depressant: it makes us feel sad and depressed, which further increases the risk of overeating.

This book is about how great it is to live in a world where food is just food, not an enemy, cult, trial or punishment. Tips to help stop overeating, do without dietary patterns and restrictions, find a balance between healthy and free food and allow yourself to eat without guilt and anxiety.

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