16 tips for those who eat and can't stop

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Food is not only a necessity of life, but also a pleasure. Many people eat not because they are hungry, but because it tastes good. And they don’t notice that they consume more food than the body needs. The result is known - excess weight, dissatisfaction with oneself, bad mood. And these are not the most serious consequences - constant overeating negatively affects all systems and organs.

How can you stop eating a lot if it brings you pleasure? Read about this in our article. You'll learn how to tell if you're eating too much food and the most effective ways to stop overeating.

Eat alone

If while eating a person is distracted and does not pay attention to his portion, he eats E.
Robinson, P. Aveyard, A. Daley et al. Eating attentively: A systematic review and meta-analysis of the effect of food intake memory and awareness on eating / American Journal of Clinical Nutrition more. While watching TV, portions increase. M. M. Hetherington, A. S. Anderson, G. N. M. Norton, L. Newson. Situational effects on meal intake: A comparison of eating alone and eating with others / Physiology & Behavior, on average, by 14%, and when communicating with friends - by 18%. To feel full, it is not enough to put food in the stomach; the process itself is important. You must see the food, smell and taste it. When you are driving, reading or talking, your brain is busy. Ogden, N. Coop, C. Cousins et al. Distraction, the desire to eat and food intake. Towards an expanded model of mindless eating / Appetite with these tasks and does not receive food data. As a result, your appetite lasts much longer.

Eat alone, put down your smartphone, turn off the TV. Focus on the food and how it makes you feel, and you'll feel full much sooner.

Ways to start eating less

It is believed that an amount of food the size of your fist is sufficient for normal satiety. A single serving should be approximately this volume. You shouldn’t mindlessly rush to extremes and eat even less or go on starvation diets. On the contrary, you need to eat more often, more variedly, the main thing is not to overeat. And to take control of your insatiable appetite, there are several tricks.

Drink water

Water is also, to some extent, food, but it is digested much faster, cleanses, saturates, and helps metabolism. Therefore, nutritionists advise people to drink a glass or two of plain clean water before meals. It will fill the stomach and leave less volume for food. It is enough to eat a small portion, the size of two palms, to feel full. You just need to be patient and start eating half an hour after drinking water.

Meals should be satisfying, but low in calories (no fatty, sweet, unhealthy foods)

Just in case, let us recall the first principle of healthy eating: it is best to exclude fatty, sweet, unhealthy foods in the form of smoked and pickled foods, and fast food from the diet. But there is good news: you don’t have to categorically refuse such food. In the first half of the day, until 12 o'clock, you can treat yourself to a piece of cake, eat a slice of pizza or pancakes with honey. The rest of the day, eat low-calorie, but filling meals.

You can’t give up complex carbohydrates, which are found in rye bread, pasta and cereals. A healthy diet consists of proportions 20/50/30, where the first is proteins, the second is fats, and the third is carbohydrates.

Learn to immediately understand that you are full

It is not difficult to understand that you are full, but at the same time you cannot do without special techniques. As medical research confirms, the brain gives the command “Stop, I’m full!” with a delay of 15-20 minutes. During this time, a person is able to eat several times more than necessary and not feel full.

There are simple ways to stop overeating:

you need to eat slowly, chewing every bite;
intentionally put half of the amount that you usually eat on your plate and go to the living room away from the kitchen and frying pans;
do not think about food while eating, do not even hold a spoon and fork in your hand when chewing;
distract yourself from eating by watching TV or reading a book.

Important! Note: those who are overweight eat much faster than others. The slower you eat, the faster you will regain your weight.

And you shouldn’t add a large portion, so as not to provoke yourself. Allow at least 20 minutes to eat; do not eat on the go.

Don't eat out of boredom

Often food becomes a means of spending leisure time. “What would you do with something like that? Tea with buns.” Stop! Keep yourself busy with something useful that will absorb you completely. Someone sews, someone draws, someone walks with friends. And the best thing is to go in for sports or just dance to pleasant music at home. Moderate physical activity will tone muscles and burn excess fat.

But remember one important point: even if your hobby distracts you from eating, and the feeling of hunger does not appear even after 4-5 hours, you still need to eat. Overeating often occurs in those who “forgot” about food for a while, and then remembered and attacked it with a voracious appetite.

Stop eating stress

There are two types of people: the first do not eat at all when stressed, the second “eat up” it. Scientists have proven that any physical action relieves a nervous condition, be it eating food or running, walking, exercising, dancing, swimming, breaking dishes. It’s better to do something useful - cleaning, washing, ironing.

How to stop being nervous and eat a lot of food? Eating food during stress is the body’s need for “happiness” hormones (dopamine and serotonin). And it is produced when eating sweets and some other foods. But these same hormones are produced during physical activities such as dancing, swimming, exercise, yoga and just walking.

Communication with nature also promotes the production of the “happiness” hormone and relieves nervous tension. A park, river, sea, or just communicating with pets is much more effective than eating buns and chocolate.

Eat more often, but in small portions

A great way to get rid of overeating is to eat more often, but in small portions. To start, simply halve your usual portion. Immediately add a smaller portion than usual: do not try to eat half and leave the rest. It’s unlikely that there will be enough willpower for this. Consider the rationale: food won't run away. If you are not full now, you can eat more in 2 hours.

What happens during this diet:

within a week the stomach decreases in size and takes on its previous shape, equal to two of our palms folded together in a boat;
Regular eating helps speed up metabolism;
This regime also makes it possible to introduce separate nutrition, in which proteins are not mixed with carbohydrates.

Important! The feeling of fullness comes faster when the stomach becomes a normal size. Now the main thing is not to stretch it again.

But even if you overeat again, don’t despair, start over. Periodic breakdowns are common to everyone, such is human psychology. But starvation diets will not prevent overeating. The body will begin to panic and store fats in reserve even from the minimum that the person losing weight has allowed himself. Moreover, “hunger” attacks are not excluded, when a person experiences a wild appetite after two or three days of a strict diet and rushes to eat. Such breakdowns doubly return what was lost during the hunger strike.

Eat from smaller dishes

In the fight against overeating, everything matters, even the dishes. Psychologically, a large plate calls for larger portions. Even if you put a large piece on it, you get the impression that there is not enough food. Conversely, small dishes filled to the brim create the impression of a huge portion.

Hence the conclusion: start eating from smaller dishes. Of course, we must add to this the rest of the food intake rules listed above.

Keep a food diary

Some people think that they eat little, but for some reason they get fat. The point is a mistaken perception of the amount of food. During the day, we don’t even notice how much we actually eat. If all this is also calculated into calories, the real picture will emerge.

A food diary will help you take the right course in the fight against overeating and excess weight. It looks something like this:

You can also download and print a food diary template in excel format from the link.

An important point is the caloric content of food. Each person has his own norm. It depends on age, height, weight, lifestyle. There is an equation by which you can calculate how many calories you need in a state of moderate rest, in the absence of physical activity.

It is calculated simply (for women):

your weight in kilograms must be multiplied by 10;
height in centimeters multiplied by 6.25;
age multiplied by 5;
add the second to the first number, and then subtract the third;
Subtract 161 from the resulting amount.

Example: 30 years old, height 170, weight 65. We create the formula 65x10+170x6.25-30x5-161= 1401.5. Exactly so many calories are needed to maintain the same figure. For men, the calculations are similar, only at the end you don’t need to minus 161, but rather add 5.

Recipes for healthy eating

Salad with beans, croutons and smoked sausage

5.6 g Protein
6 g Fat
16.5 g Carbohydrates
142.2 kcal

30 min.

#second course
#greenery
#yogurt
#sausage
#carrot
#dinner
#snack
#salad
#salted cucumbers
#spices
#dinner
#beans

Other recipes

Don't give up all your favorite foods at once

To do this, you need iron willpower. But even this will not help if external circumstances are against you. Stress and fatigue can destroy your self-control, you will break down and act according to the principle: “The barn burned down, the house burns.”

Shift your focus to eating healthy foods, but occasionally allow yourself delicious high-calorie foods.

There's nothing wrong with eating a slice of pizza, ice cream, or chocolate as long as you eat healthy the rest of the day. This will help you avoid breakdowns at first and get used to proper nutrition.

Change your eating habits gradually. Sometimes allow yourself tasty high-calorie foods to avoid crashing.

I started eating a lot: why not stop eating?

To this day, there are places on the planet where the problem of hunger comes first. Just a hundred years ago, there were few countries in which nutritious food was available to the common population. We, people, have been hungry for the entire period of our existence, therefore food has much more meaning than it seems at first glance:

Satisfies immediate hunger and serves as a guarantee of survival tomorrow.
It is a regulator of relationships between people and a way to improve relationships.
And this is the highest pleasure, supported by a feeling of security and safety. If you have any doubts, try not eating for a day or two...

Food is a basic need, which can be partially overlapped by more significant things, depending on the desires and properties of the psyche - vectors. What if he can’t? What if there is no happiness in life? I want love, but no one loves me. I want to become the best in my business - no one respects me. I want a family - they don’t invite me to marry. From all sides - complete stress.

It’s clear why a person starts eating a lot. This is a person who is passionate about his work and forgets whether he has eaten or not. And if this fire is not there, then at least get some pleasure. Food is a time-tested option. Especially when there is no understanding of what exactly you want from life in order for happiness to come.

Why do I eat a lot

But not everything is as simple as it seems. It is not enough to understand that with the help of food we gain lost happiness. It’s not enough to even realize what exactly is missing, what desire in what direction is not being satisfied. Realized - what to do next?

Food is a basic need of any living creature. But only man managed to turn it into both entertainment and... punishment. Those who in childhood were forced to finish semolina porridge with lumps or drink milk with foam will understand what we are talking about. When the pleasure intended by nature becomes torture, this inevitably affects the entire worldview. And this is not about food at all.

At Yuri Burlan’s training “System-vector psychology”

the topic of force feeding is discussed in detail. As a result, food-related traumas received in childhood are relieved. A person begins to understand not only why he eats a lot without receiving obvious pleasure from it, but also understands many moments when he is unable to receive pleasure from life itself.

Gratitude and joy from getting what you want is the same skill as others acquired in childhood. And when “happiness” is forced in, it’s unlikely that anyone will be able to experience even the slightest bit of pleasure. And the now adult aunt puts it on her plate again and again, subconsciously hoping to get it filled. My stomach already hurts, and the pleasure keeps slipping away.

Reduce stress

Prolonged stress increases appetite and cravings. Sominsky, S. J. Spencer. Eating behavior and stress: A pathway to obesity / Frontiers in Psychology to high-calorie foods. Under the influence of stress hormones, fat in the waist area quickly increases, and losing weight becomes a difficult task.

We cannot always influence external events, but we can change our reaction to them. Try relaxation and breathing techniques to combat short-term stress. Rewire your brain with meditation, get positive emotions from exercise.

Stress leads to overeating and storing fat. Fight stress using different techniques and physical exercises.

How do you know if you are overeating?

A surefire indicator that you are eating more than you should is weight gain. Although other reasons can lead to excess weight, we will talk about them later.

Overeating is characterized by several signs:

you eat everything faster than your normal-weight friends and relatives;
you experience discomfort due to eating a large amount of food;
your night sleep is disturbed;
you feel guilty after eating;
eat often when you are not hungry;
eat a lot when you are stressed or happy;
you often experience a loss of strength, a lack of positive emotions;
gaining weight.

Overeating is not just a bad habit. This is pathology. First you need to understand the cause of this condition, then take action as quickly as possible. The consequences of overeating are expressed not only in digestive disorders, all systems suffer - from the cardiovascular to the nervous. Excessive food consumption leads to obesity and premature aging.

Don't eat with someone who overeats

If you can't eat alone, at least choose people with healthy eating habits.

People tend toB. Ellison, J. L. Lusk, D. Davis. Looking at the label and beyond: The effects of calorie labels, health consciousness, and demographics on caloric intake in restaurants / International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity If your interlocutor eats two Big Macs with a liter of cola, you are more likely to allow yourself to eat more and also order something unhealthy.

You are taking certain medications

Several medications may increase appetite as a side effect. The most common appetite stimulants are antipsychotics, such as clozapine and olanzapine, as well as antidepressants, mood stabilizers, corticosteroids, and birth control (61, 62, 63, 64).

In addition, some diabetes medications, such as insulin, insulin stimulants, and thiazolidinediones, are known to increase hunger and appetite (65).

There is also some compelling evidence that birth control pills have appetite-stimulating properties, but this is not supported by large-scale scientific studies.

If you suspect medications are the cause of your constant hunger, try talking to your doctor about other treatment options. There may be alternative medications that will not cause this side effect.

Summary:
Some medications cause increased appetite as a side effect. In turn, they can make you feel constantly hungry.

Add more protein

High protein foods help control appetiteA. Missimer, D. M. DiMarco, C. J. Andersen et al. Consuming two eggs per day, as compared to an oatmeal breakfast, decreases plasma ghrelin while maintaining the LDL/HDL ratio / Nutrients. Prepare a high protein breakfastH. J. Leidy, L. C. Ortinau, S. M. Douglas, H. A. Hoertel. Beneficial effects of a higher-protein breakfast on the appetitive, hormonal, and neural signals controlling energy intake regulation in overweight/obese, “breakfast-skipping,” late-adolescent girls / American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, and you won’t remember about eating until lunch itself.

Include protein in every meal, add eggs, chicken, milk and cottage cheese, red fish, tuna, and legumes to your diet. In addition to your main meals, you can prepare high-protein snacks.

How to stop uncontrollably eating

An effective way to protect yourself from temptation is to remove everything tasty out of sight. By the way, if there is a lot of food in the refrigerator, that’s good. But only on the condition that it is healthy: vegetables, fruits, herbs, fish, poultry, chicken, dairy products. But you should get rid of semi-finished products, canned food and sweets. What other rules will help you lose weight faster and break out of the shackles of overeating?

Do not go to the store on an empty stomach: this will create more temptations to buy tasty and unhealthy food. In addition to the obvious health benefits, you will get good savings.
Eat more often, but in small portions.
Keep a food diary.
Include dietary supplements in your diet that will help get rid of cravings for sweets. For example, “Yellow Tablets” from Herbalife Nutrition*, which contain chromium, reduce the need for sweets and help control hunger, and Garcinia Cambogia, a rich source of hydroxycitric acid, helps control appetite and stimulates the fat burning process.

Choose foods with a low glycemic index

When you eat foods containing carbohydrates, your blood sugar levels, called glucose, rise. The more the glucose level rises after eating, the higher the glycemic index of the product (GI).

High GI foods reduce E. E. J. G. Aller, Ir Abete, A. Astrup et al. Starches, sugars and obesity / Nutrients feeling full, causing you to eat more. In addition, carbohydrates from such foods are quickly absorbed, so you will be hungry again very soon.

The highest GI values are for white bread and pastries, sugar and sweets, starchy vegetables: potatoes and corn (popcorn, corn flakes).

You have a certain disease or condition

Constantly feeling hungry is a symptom of several specific diseases. First, frequent hunger is a classic sign of diabetes. It occurs as a result of extremely high blood sugar levels and is usually accompanied by other symptoms such as excessive thirst, weight loss, and fatigue (76).

Hyperthyroidism, a condition characterized by an overactive thyroid gland, is also associated with increased hunger. This is because it causes excess production of thyroid hormones, which are known to promote appetite (77, 78).

Additionally, excessive hunger is often a symptom of several other conditions, such as depression, anxiety, and premenstrual syndrome (56, 80).

If you suspect you may have one of these conditions, it is important that you talk to your doctor about a proper diagnosis and discuss treatment options.

Summary:
Excessive hunger is a symptom of several specific diseases and conditions that should be ruled out if you are hungry frequently.

Replace sugary drinks with water

Sweet soda is sold in fast food chains for a reason: it increases appetite. If you replace regular water with sugary drinks, you risk M. C. Daniels, B. M. Popkin. The impact of water intake on energy intake and weight status: A systematic review / Nutrition Reviews eat 7.8% more. In addition, sugary drinks increase daily calorie intake, according to Meng Wang, Min Yu, Le Fang, Ru-Ying Hu. Association between sugar-sweetened beverages and type 2 diabetes: A meta-analysis / Journal of Diabetes Investigation the risk of type 2 diabetes, overweight and obesity.

Rules for moderate nutrition

For those planning to start losing weight, there are several basic recommendations.

Drink plain water throughout the day. The consumption rate is at least 1.5 liters of clean liquid. If desired, water can be replaced with unsweetened herbal drinks or green tea.
The menu must include slow carbohydrates: porridge, whole grain bread, vegetables.
Avoid fast food and processed foods, as well as store-bought sweets and packaged concentrated juices.
Don't overeat. As soon as you feel that you are full, you can leave the table. Even if there is food left on the plate.
Don't eat out of boredom. If you notice such a habit, take up useful hobbies, go for walks more often or do household chores.
Don't eat stress. Cake or milk chocolate will not help relieve nervous tension. Better start yourself a useful ritual for relaxation.

Understand the causes of overeating

Overeating is typical M. Singh. Mood, food, and obesity / Frontiers in Psychology for people after stress, in a state of anxiety, melancholy and boredomA. B. Moynihan, W. A. P. van Tilburg, E. R. Igou et al. Eaten up by boredom: Consuming food to escape awareness of the bored self / Frontiers in Psychology. A bad mood forces people to choose high-calorie, delicious food to distract themselves from negative experiences and improve their psychological state.

Awareness of the problem is the first step to solving it. When you find yourself craving food again after stress or boredom, try other ways to improve your mood: go for a walk, do an at-home workout, call a friend.

Find out if your overeating is related to boredom and bad mood. Find a way to improve your mood without food.

Additional recommendations

To quickly get rid of the bad habit of overeating, follow the above tips. Additionally, they can help you:

Take a wellness test and create your individual nutrition plan. Herbalife Nutrition nutrition consultants will help you with this.
Include Herbalife Nutrition products in your diet
Clean gaps. This is a complete lack of calories between meals. At this time, only drinking clean water is allowed.
Fresh food. To get rid of heaviness in the stomach and other unpleasant consequences of overeating, eat only dishes prepared no more than a day ago. Ideally, you need to cook for one meal.
Healthy sleep. We fill up the sleep deficit with calories, which are supposed to give the body the missing energy. Therefore, try to follow a daily routine and get the required eight hours of sleep.

Replace some carbohydrates with fats

Foods rich in fat keep P. longer. C. Chandler-Laney, SA Morrison, LLT Goree et al. Return of hunger following a relatively high carbohydrate breakfast is associated with earlier recorded glucose peak and nadir / Appetite feeling full compared to a high carbohydrate meal.

If you are prone to atherosclerosis, do not indulge in saturated fats from butter and lard. Add more foods with unsaturated fats: nuts, fatty fish, avocados. In any case, avoid trans fats from store-bought baked goods and fast food.

Reduce the amount of fast carbohydrates, replacing them with fats. This will keep you full longer and prevent you from snacking until your next meal.

Why is there no happiness without hunger?

The absence of mass hunger and partly force-feeding in childhood lead to the fact that we do not know how to enjoy a simple crust of bread. If the memory of many Soviet children still retains the aroma of the crust of a fresh roll or black bread, which they mercilessly nibbled on the way from the bakery, the new generation cannot imagine food without flavor enhancers.

Satisfied desire tends to double - you want new tastes, larger volumes. A person eats a lot, but receives less and less satisfaction. It’s been a long time since I’ve been happy with a buttered bun - I want delicious cakes. More and more additives and different flavors.

Even ardent followers of the family's food traditions - owners of the anal vector - are dissatisfied. The products today are not the same, the taste is not the same, the potatoes are not cooked, the carrots are tree-like, the tomatoes do not smell... There is no feeling of stability even in food.

But this does not mean that everyone needs to starve. Without damage to the psyche and health, starvation diets can only be afforded by those with the skin vector, who have learned to enjoy self-restraint - that is, not all of them. However, it is these people who eat a lot and do not gain weight, not understanding why others cannot lose weight.

I eat a lot and don’t get fat: why not gain weight

Each person has their own “much”. In addition, the metabolism of a person with a skin vector is significantly different from the metabolism of a person, for example, with an anal vector. The second is prone to gaining excess weight. Yes, this is exactly the same wide bone. But the skinner is nimble not only in behavior, all his processes proceed quickly. Information flew into one ear and out the other, I ate a bun and went to the toilet without thinking. Yes, and he moves more actively.

It is by looking at skin people that owners of other vectors suffer: “Why do many people eat and not gain weight, but I gain a kilogram with every cookie?!”

Of course, you can also feed the skin, but this is more difficult to do, and if there is no muscle vector in addition to the skin, it is unlikely.

In addition, as already mentioned, a leather worker can enjoy restrictions. From the fact that something delicious has been postponed for tomorrow. From a healthy lifestyle. It is likely that in his understanding, “eating a lot” means two cucumbers instead of one, and not at all two plates of dumplings with mayonnaise.

And sometimes a person with the skin vector eats really a lot. But periodic stress, due to which skin patients completely lose their appetite, excessive fuss and inability to organize their life schedule, as a result, prevent them from gaining weight to normal.

Consider your weaknesses

Some crave sweets, others cannot live without baked goods or French fries. Think about which high-calorie foods make you lose your mind, and no longer keep them in your home. To fill the snacking gap, make tuna sandwiches, fruit platters, banana, white yogurt and nut desserts and other healthy options.

If you can’t live without candy and chips, at least put them away from the table in the cupboard so that when you pass by you don’t automatically snag a handful of junk food.

Changing the diet

Poor nutrition is responsible for obesity, atherosclerosis, hypertension, heart attack and even gastrointestinal cancer. That is why there are collections of recommendations based on WHO documents.

To avoid unhealthy weight gain, total fat intake should not exceed 30% of total energy intake, free sugars should be reduced to 10%, and salt to 5 g per day.

To stop overeating, protein must be present in your diet. This is a necessary complex of amino acids: thanks to these substances, all regenerative processes in the body occur. You can get protein from plant or animal foods, and in case of severe deficiency, from protein shakes. For example, “Formula 1” from Herbalife Nutrition can replace a full meal, saturating the body with the necessary amount of protein and providing a long-lasting feeling of satiety. One serving of such a protein shake can contain up to 14 g of protein (this depends on the taste of the drink). Don't forget about fiber: Dietary Fiber Complex and Oatmeal-Apple Drink from Herbalife Nutrition will help you with this.

Common causes of gluttony

It is possible to cope with uncontrolled overeating only after determining the cause of this condition. They are presented in several types.

Classification	Causes
Physiological	Serious illnesses, such as diabetes. Lack of vitamins, causing a false feeling of hunger. Eating disorders resulting from improper weight loss in the past. Addiction to food, which is similar to the need for drugs or nicotine. Problems with serotonin production.
Social	Availability of numerous grocery stores and catering establishments. The desire to try harmful and advertised products. The cult of food, developed from childhood due to improper upbringing by parents. Reluctance to offend the host who has set the festive table for the guests. Greed that forces a person to eat the entire portion in a restaurant or eat up food in the refrigerator so that it does not spoil. Constantly using strict diets that consume a tiny amount of calories, but this behavior leads to breakdowns and overeating. Refusal of a strict diet, so people skip breakfast in the morning, but eat a lot of food at dinner.
Psychological	Lack of confidence in your attractiveness due to excess weight. Loneliness. Regular nervous breakdowns or stress. Food acts as a reward for any achievement.

Any reason requires competent and timely treatment. Otherwise, a person will not be able to cope with his appetite, which leads to significant weight gain, deterioration of self-esteem and depression. Therefore, the recommendations of psychologists, trainers and nutritionists are taken into account, thanks to which you can stop eating too much.