Why We Overeat
Everyone, at one time or another, overeats and puts on the pounds. One such reason that we overeat that in some people feeling hungry will trigger panic so when they feel the first twinge of a hunger pain, they go looking for food. If they do not get the food, they become anxious. These feelings of panic when you feel hungry could come from many reasons. Such reasons might be because you had limited food when you were a child, you were hungry as a child, or you had a strict restriction on certain type of foods.
When this happens, you have to retrain your body and brain to realize that it is okay to be hungry that you have food to eat, but you do not really need it now that you can wait awhile to eat.
Another reason that you might overeat is that you believe you have to finish everything that you have on your plate. This is a rule that you were told when you were a child and if you did not eat everything on your plate, you sat at the dinning room table until you did. In adulthood, we have that in our minds so that thought overrides their natural alarm system that tells us we are full and need to stop eating. One way to help retrain our body is to take smaller portions thus enabling ourselves to clean our plates without overeating. We need to realize that nothing bad is going to happen if we get full and leave a little food on our plates.
Overeating may not have anything to do with being afraid if your feel hunger pains and will want to eat, or with having it in our minds that we have to eat everything on our plates. Overeating can just be a habit. When you stop and think about it, it is true and it is a bad habit because so many of our activities are based around food. When we get together with friends and family, it may involve a meal or just some type of snacks or going to a movie we are hit by the smell of fresh popcorn and we just have to have some along with some candy and a big drink.
As you can see, there are many reasons why we overeat, but all three of these reasons can change if we just put some time and effort in it.