The Delicious Dilemma: 5 Reasons we Overeat when we Don't Want to

00:00 - 31:26 Speaker 1: Welcome to another mouth-watering episode of Mindful Eating and Inner Healing. Today, we're going to embark on a tantalizing journey into the heart of our appetites, exploring the delicious dilemma of why we sometimes find ourselves overindulging when all we actually want to do is resist that extra cupcake, chocolate, or for me this week, it's been grandma's ginger cake. We're going to explore why we can't just tell ourselves we're not gonna do something and just stick to it. We're going to take a look at the HALT acronym explaining why we engage in behaviors that we really don't want to and why willpower doesn't actually really work long-term. So let's enjoy the delicious dilemma, 5 reasons we overeat when we don't want to. Okay, let's look at the 5 reasons we overeat when we actually don't really want to. Now, when we want to, that's cool, right? It's all conscious and controlled and thought out, but we're talking about overeating when we don't want to. Now let's define overeating. Overeating is just this act of consuming more food than the body actually requires for sustenance and energy. It involves eating beyond the point of satiety or fullness, and it often results in the intake of excess calories. That's probably like most of us, according to the statistics. So just take a moment to cast your mind to when the last time you did this was. Yeah, mine was probably yesterday when I was teaching yoga at a healing festival. And the kids went to their grandmas and it was actually my partner Paul's birthday. And while the boys were at their grandmas, they made this crazy cake. And they put all of these weird lollies and chocolates and sour straps and they just went crazy and put all of these lollies on top. Now after just licking a little bit of icing, like I thought, yeah I'll just have a little bit of icing. That'll be cool. That was a mistake. I was lured into choosing 1 of the most elaborately topped pieces. Like I mean, elaborately topped with like all of this crazy lollies. So then like a few hours after, the birthday boy looks at my stomach and says, ah, geez, you're gonna have to get your maternity clothes back out of the cupboard. Yeah, okay, dude, thanks. So just for the record, no egos or self-esteem were harmed at the helm of this comment. There may have been a little bit of a loving middle finger flip when my little boys weren't looking. This symptom, like the full-on bloating, is just a special little gift that keeps on giving throughout my life, brought to you by lactose and gluten intolerance. Anyways, on that note, it's important to note that occasional overeating, such as during special occasions or celebrations. So this was my husband's, well, we're not married technically, I just call him my husband. So my partner's birthday. So this is a part of normal human behavior, eating on special occasions. However, we all know that chronic and excessive overeating can contribute to various health issues. They say lifestyle actually contributes to up to 80 to 90% of health issues. Now these include, we all know, living with obesity, digestive problems, metabolic disorders, heart disease, and even cancers. Now the reasons behind overeating are multifaceted and they can greatly vary from person to person and they involve this combination of psychological, emotional and of course environmental factors. So today we're looking at the top 5, like there's a million different ones but we're going to look at 5. If you already own my online course Mindful Eating, Mindset and Metabolism Mastery, you'll know that we look at 15 different aspects of why we overeat and you'll find it in the module called Balance Beyond Cravings. But for today, we're going to look at 5. The first 1 for today is none other than calorie restriction or skipping meals. I once had this client and we got online, it was a Zoom call and she's like, I'm sabotaging myself again Larissa, I'm sabotaging myself, I can't believe what I'm doing. I'm like, okay, let's just stop here. I never believe anything I hear until I investigate the behavior leading up to the event. So before digging into and looking and unearthing her subconscious drivers of her self-proclaimed sabotage, I just simply asked, tell me about your day. Tell me about your day leading up to this overindulgence. And she said, okay, well, it all started. My daughter missed the bus for school. So instead of eating breakfast, I just had to grab a banana so I could jump in the car, drive her to school and rush home and start work for the day. All right. And so then I started work and I had a super busy day that I didn't really get to plan for. So I had these back-to-back clients and I ended up working through lunch and then the afternoon came. I was ravenous. I was so ravenous and I started pigging out. Okay, let's stop there. This lovely client's long-term focus is to eat wholesome, nutritious foods to really help with her health because she had a couple of health issues going on. So all that happened was she become really hungry. Now she become past the point of normal hunger and just went into habit behavior, which was eating all the foods that she said that she wanted to give up or over eating because the brain was like, I need calories. And the brain has these reference points on what foods is going to give you the most calories and the quickest. So quite often, these are ultra processed foods. They're low volume, but high calorie, not to mention we all know, super tasty. When we're ravenous, instead of like steaming up some broccoli or poaching an egg, we tend to just reach for these quick, easy, high-caloric foods. Now, the brain, it's pretty smart, right? It just wants you to take the path of least resistance. It's not objective. It just knows you're hungry and it has reference points, as I said, in the past of ways to combat this the quickest. Now, in the beginning of this podcast, do you already remember that I mentioned the HALT acronym? Now, when I'm saying HALT, it's H-A-L-T, HALT. Now, this would be a great time to explain the HALT acronym. Firstly, the HALT acronym is often used in the context of addiction recovery, particularly for individuals dealing with substance abuse or just general addictive behaviors. Now HALT stands for, we're going to start with the H and I've already explained it to you. H is hungry. Being hungry can affect our mood and also our energy levels, making it more challenging to cope with life in general, stress and triggers. Now check out podcast number 4, why do I eat when I'm stressed? And you'll learn a little bit more about stress being a trigger for overeating. We're gonna go to the A of the HALT acronym. A is for angry. So I'm gonna say angry, frustrated, overwhelmed, or any big emotion. Unresolved anger or big emotions can be powerful emotional triggers for addictive behaviors. So they're painful. We want to get out of pain, right? So we search for food for comfort. Now, the context of food in any emotion? Is that itself soothing or comfort? All right, so that's the A of the whole. Next, we have the L, which is feelings of loneliness. Feelings of loneliness or isolation can really contribute to us for seeking out solace and comfort or even distraction through some of the behaviours that have become addictions for us. Basically, we seek companionship or comfort in the form of food. Our social and emotional needs are fundamental and when unmet, some of us turn to overeating as a way to really feel this void or distract ourselves from this pain or feelings of loneliness and whatever story that we have made up around it. I once had a client who was a super busy professional, but she lived on her own. She came to me with lower back pain. Actually, she came to my boss when I worked in injury rehab. She had a really stressful and sedentary job that she actually loved, but both a recipe for back pain. In the afternoon, she'd drive home, she was hungry, tired, and also lonely. And she revealed to me when doing 1 of my wellness programs that she'd just come home and she was exhausted. She'd just sit on the couch, open a bag of potato chips, which mind you, is the perfect combination of salt, fat, sugar, and crunch, and she would devour them all. They became like her trusty companion. I'm going to share a little bit more about her later. So the T in the HALT is tired. Tiredness, fatigue, exhaustion, they really weaken our ability to cope with stress and triggers and make it easier to give in to cravings and impulses. Now when we're tired, stressed, our ability to make conscious, healthy choices become compromised. So when it comes to food, fatigue really leads to this desire for a quick energy boost, which we all know are found in sugary or high caloric foods. I know when my kids have woken me up a few times in the night, come around 2 or 3 p.m. The next day, I start fossicking around the pantry for dark chocolate. It's that little combo of fat, sugar of course, and it's got a little bit of caffeine to give me a kick, to give me the alertness and cognitive boost I think I need for the rest of the day. Well, I think it works, right, in my head, but now I've tracked my habit loops and the outcomes. It doesn't really work for me, but we're gonna go into that in a different podcast. So when we're faced with hunger, anger or high emotion, loneliness or tiredness, halt, prefrontal cortex's executive functions, so that's the front part of our brain, the more recent addition to the brain, these functions can be compromised. So I always say they kind of go offline, right? You know, when you're trying to look up something like on your phone or your computer and the web browser isn't working, you're like, oh man, it's just or it's loading really slow. That's kind of like our cognitive or executive center, boom, it just goes offline. Now, when this goes offline, we move into more primitive parts of our brains associated with habit and emotion. Goodbye, rational thinking and what we think is willpower and hello, old habits and just reactive behavior. This shift can really make it challenging for us people who want to avoid overeating or even people in any type of addiction recovery to resist the allure of old habits or old impulsive responses. This absolutely emphasizes the importance of developing other viable alternative coping strategies. If you're someone who listens to my podcast religiously, I have gone through this before, but we need to repeat that. So this absolutely emphasizes the importance of really understanding our triggers, our behaviors and what we perceive they're giving us and developing alternative coping strategies. And this will help us navigate these challenges and give us options. Give us options in a holistic approach to our goals and our well-being. Now, we all need to get to know how our brain works and our triggers and our behaviors and what's going on here. All right, time for a pop quiz. What does the H for halt stand for? Yep, you got it, hungry. When we get super hungry, it's gonna drive us to overeat. It's just a survival thing, right? Like my client at the beginning, when I started chatting with you today. Oh, I'm sabotaging myself again. No, stuff went down, you were busy and you got hungry. That's all that happened. We don't have to overcomplicate it. Not on that day anyway. So if we plan ahead, we have healthy snacks handy, and we avoid skipping meals as much as we can. So like if you haven't eaten for 345 hours, you're probably gonna be hungry. It's a little bit different for everyone. And your blood sugar is gonna take a drop and you're gonna be on the scrounge for food to give you that energy boost. Our brains primarily work on glucose, so your body probably wants that boost. Alright team, you got it. Let's do the next 1. What does the A stand for? Yep, angry. Or I like to add frustrated, overly emotional or overwhelmed. Okay, ever heard of the term, oh my gosh, she was so angry, she was out of her mind. So when we become angry or crazy, you know, we act like animals and we get all reactive. This is where that term comes from, she's out of her mind. Yep, yep, yep. She's out of her rational mind. All right. She's out of her rational mind, he or she, and they've gone into reactive behavior. Do you remember what the L's for? Yep, lonely. Now let's remember you can be surrounded by people and still feel lonely. When we feel disconnected from ourselves, our community or the world in general, we seek that connection. Now some of us have learned that we can gain a sense of connection through food, so through eating. Hello, my old friend, ice cream. Oh, that first tantalizing bite. It just spritzes my system with dopamine. Ah, sweet connection. And I've forgotten about everything else that's going on in my life and my worries. But it doesn't last long before I go into self-loathing and I feel bad for eating ice cream. So this is where we think what we're doing is helping, but long-term it's not. So then we kind of go back for another scoop or another bowl and then we just think this is not really feeling this inner void because nothing on the outside can fill an inner void. The last 1, Do you remember what that is? Yes, you got it. Too easy, tired, halt, H-A-L-T, tired, lethargy or just low in energy. For whatever reason, it could be because of nutritional deficiencies, tiredness, low iron, you just worked really hard that day, whatever it is. This impairs executive functions, as I said, that higher mind, decision-making and self-control, and we may struggle to maintain focus and resist impulsive behaviors. This creates this opening for us to revert to familiar, often addictive behaviors. Now when it comes to food, we also seek an energy boost. Okay, so that's the HALT acronym. Now, we're just, I'm going to go over this whole brain prefrontal cortex thing because it's so important because we need to understand our brains and how they work if we want to change our behaviors rather than beating ourselves up thinking we're fundamentally flawed and there's something wrong with me. No, the prefrontal cortex, a part of the brain, particularly the executive functions, play a crucial, crucial role in decision-making, impulse control, so self-control and emotional regulation. Now, when we're hungry, angry, lonely, I can't say that, I'll say it again fast, hungry, angry, lonely, tired, halt, the impact on the prefrontal cortex can really contribute to a shift from thoughtful decision-making and visions of our future self and shift from this to a reliance on old habits or emotional responses. And we say it's typically associated with the limbic system, different part of the brain. All right, you got that. That's the HALT acronym. So I promised you 5 reasons why we overeat when we don't want to, and the HALT acronym has given us 4 already. So here's another 1 to reflect upon. This is a proven reason we overeat, thanks to researcher Kevin Hall, is that we're eating processed or ultra processed food a lot of the time. It says that people eat from 60 up to 80% ultra-processed food. Hang with me I'm gonna tell you why. These foods are industrially manufactured and engineered to have this bliss point. Just the right amount of salt, sugar, fat, and the perfect texture or crunch. It just leaves us wanting more and more and more like my beautiful client and the potato chips. Like she didn't sit on the couch eating a banana. No, it was potato chips. So Dr. Kevin Hall, he's actually a researcher at the National Institute of Diabetes, Digestive and Kidney Disease. In this particular study that he did, participants were given the same number of calories, but from different diets. So 1 of the diets actually was made up of processed food or ultra processed food, and the other was all about whole foods. Now the actual study was titled ultra processed diets cause excess calorie intake and weight gain an inpatient randomized control trial. Now a group I think it was like by memory you can look it up 20 participants were invited to spend 4 weeks at the Institute. So for 2 of these weeks, they were given this whole food diet which was all portioned and calorie controlled by the Institute chefs. And the other 2 weeks, the diet consisted of ultra processed food. So these both diets were designed to be isocaloric, containing the same number of calories. Now, when they gave the same people 2 weeks on the whole food diet, 2 weeks on the ultra-processed diet, they gave the participants the food and just said, you can eat as much or as little as you like. So the outcome, the participants consumed more calories when given the ultra-processed food compared to the unprocessed foods, despite the meals containing the same amount of calories. So, all the food that was given were all the same amount of calories. So the participants uniformly ate more on the processed food diet. So the findings of this study suggest that a degree of food processing influence factors such as satiety, leading people to consume more calories when presented with ultra-processed food. You might have even experienced this yourself. When you're eating ultra-processed food, you find it hard to actually stop. You just keep eating and eating and eating. Now, this research contributes valuable insights into the potential impact of food processing on eating behavior and also weight management. Now I always just tend to remember Kevin's name because his last name is similar to mine. Hall, mines Halls. Okay so Kevin has also conducted some really interesting studies on the participants of the biggest loser following them for years after they participated in the biggest loser. But I'll save that 1 for another day for you. All right. So what is going to be your friend in these situations to help you move out of these habit loops once you've identified why you're overeating? It's not because of a lack of willpower or you're hopeless or anything like that. It's really important to notice the behavior just as a behavior and then track back and have a look at the triggers. Willpower is not gonna be a great friend because scientists haven't even pinpointed if willpower is an actual thing. It's not really gonna help us when we start to go back into these primitive parts of the brain that just lead us into habits and known behaviors. So rather than willpower, of course, the research is pointing to mindfulness. This is my jam. Now in the face of overeating, mindfulness can step in as our supportive companion and steer us away from the struggles of willpower. Now quite often if we say, we have to not do that or why am I doing that? There's an old saying, what we resist persists. So we just lay down, we wave the white flag and we just surrender. So instead of battling our instincts, trying to force ourselves or using self-degradation to wake us up to ourselves, ah, When we notice we're starting to move into these behavior patterns, we just go into this sense of flow. Now, flow can be a mindful approach that really helps to harmonize with our primal instincts and can unearth much needed information about ourselves to foster a sense of deeper self-discovery. So when I say flow, just go with the flow. Notice the behavior, I'm doing this again. Try not to resist it or call yourself a moron or anything like that. Just notice the behavior. Oh, here I am. I'm just doing this again and make it an experiment. We notice that we're overeating or we've got some unwanted eating behavior or habit happening, invite in mindfulness and bring along mindfulness trusty companions such as awareness and acceptance, compassion, curiosity and non-judgment. Invite them all along for the ride and just start to notice yourself on this autopilot. And perhaps even just kind of look back and go, why do I think I may be doing this? For the first few times, we just observe with a sense of gentle curiosity. Leave the non-judgment behind, just gentle curiosity. We turn that bag of potato chips into a moment of self-discovery. We pause a mid-bite. We might ask, am I truly hungry? Why am I hungry? Maybe I haven't eaten for 3 or more hours. Or is there actually something else going on here? And then we can even deep dive into our feelings, exploring the why behind the snack. Do I actually even have the ability to feel? Or am I just noticing that I'm kind of disconnected from my body and the sensations in my body? What thoughts are present or am I totally numbed out? Am I off with the pixie somewhere? You might even notice if there's any diet mentalities, thoughts going through your mind. This is something we deep dive into my program, Mindful Eating, Mindset and Metabolism Masteries. So thoughts such as, oh, whatever, I've stuffed it again. I'll just start again next week. Now, this simple act of curiosity really allows us to reshape our relationship with food and help us discover our intrinsic motivations. Now, remember the client, the busy accountant who'd come home, sit on the couch and eat a bag of potato chips. Now, she even actually told me sometimes she'll just numb out, she'd fall asleep on the couch and wake up later and have to have a proper dinner and have a shower. And she came for me for back rehab. So we worked one-on-one for a while. And then I introduced a wellness program to this allied health practice. And a lot of our clients participated in the wellness program. So she discovered new ways of eating and nourishing her body and kind of went into the facts of what happens to your blood sugar if you haven't eaten for a while. And then she ended up joining our group program. Not long after that, I left. I moved into state. But she kept in contact with me for a little while. She started actually doing fun runs. I seen her at a fun run. This is a couch potato, literally eating potato chips every or most afternoons, who was stressed, probably frustrated or overwhelmed with work, hungry, tired and lonely. And so instead of just focusing on food, which quite often many of us just focus on food when we think we want to lose weight, we change the behaviours and the trajectory of her life through learning and understanding her behavior. So because she went out and she joined a group, she started to get to know all of these people and she had something to look forward to. Oh She didn't always look forward to it. She would bring her bag to the practice, to the gym and be like, oh, I really don't want to do this today. I'm like, don't worry. Have a look at all those people in there. There's about 90% who say the same thing. But of course, once they get going, They loved it. And that behavior is so much rewarding than eating a packet of potato chips. Because very rarely when we've done some exercise, we go, oh, I really wish I didn't do that exercise. No, we feel good about ourself. I did it yesterday. I was like, oh, I don't want to go to boot camp, right? And then I knew my son, he likes riding around the bike track when I'm at, it's an outdoor boot camp. And I'm like, babe, do you really want to go? And he's like, yeah, mom, yeah, I do. I'm like, my back was niggly. And I'm like, you know what? That could, I could use that as an excuse. It's a legitimate excuse. I don't want to injure my back again, end up in hospital. And I was like, you know what? I'll listen to my body. I'll take it easy. I'll practice mindfulness. It's about curiosity, non-judgment. And I went, I had the best time and I felt amazing afterwards. All right. So these thoughts, no matter how long you've been in the game, they always come up. So we just notice them with awareness and then we can start mapping some of our triggers. So once we go with the flow, we're like, I'm eating again. I wonder why, like what's triggered that? What's triggered this habit of doing this behavior? All right, well, it's the time of day, it's the environment, it's a feeling, it's a person, it's a place, whatever it is, right? Just start to notice. And then we just start mapping out that behavior and then we can start to create viable alternatives or in our Mindful Eating Mindset and Metabolism Mastery Course, we've got a whole bunch of different practices that when you have mapped out and you've discovered, you know, why we can adopt these practices into our lives. So there we have it. We got The 5 reasons we overeat when we don't want to, and we just kind of find ourselves doing it. And we haven't really even put much thought into it, but we're just doing it and we're going with it. And we're like, why am I doing this? So remember the HALT acronym, H-A-L-T. You might wanna start there when you just have this mindful awareness, why am I doing this? And also, am I eating a lot of ultra processed food? We know thanks to Kevin Hall, that ultra processed food is high in calories, but low in satiety. So we can just keep eating and eating and eating. If you found today's discussion valuable in any way, please feel free to share it with someone you might think who'll benefit from this information. I'd love you to connect with our online community, whether it's Instagram or Facebook or our private group. And you can also find the link to today's show notes in the description. So if you're someone who likes to read through things, I've also got the timestamps. If you think I really need to listen to that again then I'll put the link to the transcript page so the show note page in the caption below. Now you can also find my podcast and all the show notes at everyday inspiration.co so that's everydayinspiration.co And finally, please consider subscribing to the podcast, leave a review, and of course, stay tuned for more episodes. If you wanna find out more about mindful eating, how it can help you and when you can start, then feel free to grab my literally free training, Mindful Eating and How Can It Help Me? I'll pop the link in the show notes. So your commitment to your wellbeing is a powerful force and I'm here to help you every step of the way. So until next time, take a nourishing breath, savour the journey and embrace the opportunity to live with everyday inspiration. From my heart to yours, thanks for listening and I look forward to sharing with you again next week. Alrighty, bye for now.

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