Overeating or loss of food control?
Overeating at night? Loss of food control?
The key difference between overeating and binge eating is loss of control.
If you overeat and feel fine, you probably don't have an eating disorder. If you feel shame and guilt, along with loss of food control, it is likely a food disorder.
Binge eating is a disorder, if you're experiencing an eating disorder, I advise you to seek professional support.
What causes overeating and how can I handle it?
Looking deep into the cause of your behaviour is upmost important.
? Is your behaviour a reaction to anything in particular?
? Is your behaviour a compensation for not looking after yourself in another way? (Stress management etc.)
? Are you using food to comfort emotions?
? Is your food behaviour actually solving your problems or costing you? Not only in health & fat gain but excess treats cost money.
If you're struggling to control your food intake - Typically towards the end of the day.
Coaching Tip:
As counterintuitive as this may sound, eat enough food earlier, as opposed to later on in the day. You'll feel less restricted and withdrawn from food if you've forced yourself to hold off food until later on.
Forcing yourself to fast / or not eat enough earlier in the day often leads to a heavy food intake later in the day as a compensation for (essentially) starving yourself earlier on.
You're far more likely to overeat at 8pm as opposed to 8am. Agree?
Any negative feeling or emotion around food will cause you problems. More so in your behaviour around food choices. Behavioural issues often result in binge eating and using food as comfort. This results in a high caloric intake, well beyond your recommended calorie intake.
Fasting throughout the day can be of detriment to your health overall if you feel hungry yet force restricted eating upon yourself. Eat during times you feel genuinely hungry, forget the clock. When the day has ended, your total calorie intake is all that matters. Not the time frames you've eaten in.
Understand why you're doing... what you're doing.
Understanding your emotions & feelings can help the reduction of poor behaviour around food. Doing so will help reduce loss of food control.
If you're struggling to control your food intake.
Coaching Tip:
Your daily food choices need to hit the following criteria in order to avoid food related issues and sustain your recommended calorie intake:
Overall satisfaction must be met amongst daily food or meal choices, if your last bite to eat wasn't satisfying you're likely going to eat again order to seek out that satisfaction which often you never get, a sensible portion of chocolate will leave you just as satisfied as the whole block. Therefore, by all means eat your chocolate, just consume it in portions over time. Day by day is sensible and realistic.
Tastebud fulfilment must be met amongst daily food or meal choices, if you withdraw foods that fulfil your tastebud experience, you'll eat anything else to try compensate for missing out of the taste.
Convenience must be met amongst daily food and meal choices, ensure you're making meals easily enough, simple enough and without stress, slow cooker meals, wraps & time friendly meals will help you sustain a consistent way of eating well.
If you're struggling to control your food intake.
Coaching Tip:
Restrict or withdraw any food you deem 'bad' or 'unhelpful' towards your fitness goal & you WILL try to compensate for that taste, crunch or smell you're missing out on.
You'll end up eating all kinds of food in the fridge / cupboard in a spiral to try and fulfil that missing food you've cut out. As a result, you'll have consumed far more calories than you should've, had you just eaten what you've deemed 'bad' / 'unhelpful'. You know by now that no food is inherently 'bad' for you unless you're allergic to it.
The way you should see food, (applies to wholesome or fast food) is how good of a deal are you getting for the calories?
Here's a very simple concept:
Low quality food / little nutrients = Not a good deal for total calories.
High quality food / vitamins, fibre and minerals = Better deal for total calories.
Your overall 'diet' should be seen as how good a deal you're getting for the calories consumed. I 100% advise you to eat the foods you genuinely enjoy and feel like having. Why so?
This way you'll eradicate any food related issues creeping up. You just need to be happy with your choices and balance nutrition well, whilst ensuring you have control over your daily calorie intake. Sustainable fat loss is a result of this process.
Your emotions influence your decisions and actions:
- Your self image impacts your own beliefs
- Your beliefs are controlling your thoughts
- Your thoughts are controlling your emotions
- Your emotions are controlling your decisions
- Your decisions are controlling your actions
- Your actions are controlling your results
- Your results feed back to your self image
The point made above is very relevant as it is a big part of understanding our behaviour.