Let’s look first at what happens in your body when you overeat. Food cravings are most likely to happen when you eat a lot of processed food or low fat food, as these foods are high in sugar or sugar replacements such as maltodextrin, dextrose or artificial sweeteners. This tends to raise your insulin levels.
Sugar or artificial sweeteners / simple carbohydrates is processed into glucose in your body. Your pancreas produces insulin to support the uptake of glucose into your cells. However, when you take in more food than your body needs, your cells will receive more glucose than they need. This additional glucose is then stored as fat.
Is overeating an addiction and is it out of my control?
Let’s look at what happens on a physical level when you eat food high in sugar. There are two hormones that play a big part.
The first is a hormone called leptin (from the Greek word ‘leptos’, meaning ‘thin’) and is produced by your fat cells. It supports energy balance, suppressing food intake and thereby inducing weight loss. Potential causes of leptin resistance include inflammation, elevated free fatty acid and high leptin levels. Higher instances of all three are found in obese people.
The second is a hormone called ghrelin, which is produced in your gastrointestinal tract, especially in the stomach. This is often called the hunger hormone as it increases food intake. So while leptin will stop you from overeating, ghrelin encourages you to eat when you need food. Leptin levels are low before you eat, whereas ghrelin levels are highest.
In obese people, the circulating level of leptin is increased, there is often leptin resistance and ghrelin levels are decreased. This combination can lead to overeating. Now you have a physical explanation of why some people like to overindulge.
Which came first: the chicken or the egg?!
So which comes first, overeating because it is out of our control or vice versa? Well, let me say this first of all: it is not your fault! How would you know that processed foods, foods high in sugar and low fat foods have this effect on our bodies, causing us to want to overeat?
Of course, it is not in the food industry’s interest to give you this information. This is why education is key! Information is power and this is why I want to help you take back control of your body, through a better understanding of your true self. Eating more natural, seasonal food will serve you much better than processed food, or food high in sugar. The better the earth the plants grow in, the richer the nutrients they will contain when you eat them. Making a choice to eat better food will support you on a cellular level, helping your cells to heal and your body to thrive!
So now you have this information, what are you going to do with it? You could say, “my body is reacting this way already, so it’s too late for change. I am not strong enough to battle my food cravings!”
If these are the beliefs you hold about yourself, then change will not be easy to invite into your life. That is why it is so important to view these beliefs for what there are; thought in the moment! Through understanding the true nature of these beliefs they will slowly lose their power.
Change is always possible. If you want to invite change into your life, put one foot in front of the other, be open and change will happen, you will see.
What my clients find really helpful is when they realise it is not the food that is calling them to eat it, but the
thought of the food. When you’re out shopping and you spy something you fancy, you don’t have to pick it up. You can continue to the next aisle and by then your thoughts will probably have moved on. Maybe you bump into someone you know, or you pass the make up section and suddenly you’re thinking about which nail polish to buy!
The acknowledgement of passing thought and seeing it for what it is, is very powerful.
Here are a few practical tips: