Reasons to over-eat
- mitsuny
- Apr 15, 2020
- 7 min read
Hello!
It has been a while since we got used to this lock down situation in New York City. I personally don’t go out when I don’t need for some grocery shopping or refresh myself with the outside fresh air.
Public schools are closed since March 16 and originally planned to be closed up to April though it extended to June, up to the end of the school year.
How are you doing all in this situation today? It must feel us different from usual because everyone is staying home instead of going to work or school.
When our environment is unusual, we would have to adjust ourselves to the new environment and of course, there should be some level of stress occur in the situation. All the creatures function same in environmental adjustment including humans.
In extreme, creatures that can’t adjust environmental changes would go extinct. It is natural selection repeated in this world longest time.
In long range of cycles, extinct is one of those phenomenons when we are out of adjustments to environments but small type of adjustments always happen in our everyday life.
In smaller scale side of adjustment such as this kind of lock-down situation is still a challenge for us. This adjustments in our behaviors and mid-sets are called in psychology, coping skills.
Now what kind of coping skills do we need to stay healthy in this universal level of lock-down ?
I asusume that we need to think of lacking exercise when we tend to stay home all day. And also some weight gain so I am talking about weight management and weight loss today.
As some of you know, I made significant weight loss in my life. I lost probably around 60 pounds step by step since 2011 and keep the level for years now. It was very simple way to achieve so I want to talk about it today again.
Talking about myself, the reason I was larger was definitely over-eating. I can’t think of anything else.
A lot of people don’t know though we don’t need so much food and calories to maintain our bodies.
I hear a lot of diet methods like reducing fats and all that. However over-eating and portion to eat are always a reason why we gain weight.
In the US, 60% of people are over weight so it means that you are not even healthy when your weight is average in the US.
Not only that, like me, my size is small in the US. However I watch my weight closely because my cholesterol is high. I pay attention carefully now to my weight because of it.
Now, we come down to why we over-eat. Can you figure out why or since when you start over-eating in your life?
When stress is high, would you over-eat? It seems like some of us over-eat when we change our career, some start over-eating since they have family loss, or some gained weight when they get married. Yes, weight gain seems like happening in some environmental changes.
And unfortunately our metabolism goes down as we get older so we naturally gain weight if we eat in the same way as we ate in our younger age.
In other words, we didn’t gain weight quickly when we over-ate younger though we over-eat and it shows in our appearance when we get older.
Then we should go on a diet. However diet is losing weight when we are on it. However we gain back when we get off from it.
Because it is a diet and we can suppress our appetite for the limited period of time and exercise right for the period too. However can we continue doing them throughout in our lives? It is a tough question, isn’t it?
A lot of us say that we lost a lot of weight on the diet but gained back.
Then what should we do? How do we maintain our right portion of our eating and our healthy exercise habits?
As I said, it is harder to maintain weight in the older age. We have to have a healthy eating portion and exercise habits even more rightly in the older age.
Right eating portion and exercise habits are all on our motivation. We have to keep our motivation high if we want to achieve our healthy weight and especially maintain it.
Unfortunately there is no trick or magic about weight management so when we eat excess, it will show it on us as flesh.
Whatever we say, you are eating more than you need when you are showing the evidence in your appearance.
I had a client who ate only once every two days and she couldn’t lose weight. I can’t deny possibility that she had unusual metabolism though still weight management is about consuming calorie in plus and minus.
Going back to the topic of suppressing appetite. As I experienced on my own and heard from others, environmental changes have something to do with our amount to eat.
It is not just about our hunger at all. We eat anyway regardless we feel hungry or not.
A lot of us eat even when we are not hungry at all.
As a matter of fact, we eat to reduce our stress from outside and also our own negative feelings inside us too. We try to reduce our unwanted feelings in us and distract ourselves from feeling bad.
When we have negative/unwanted feelings in us, we use something we love to do to reduce the negativity in us and a lot of us love to eat.
There is a physiological reason too in this theory. There is tension when we have stress and we naturally try to reduce the tension because it feels uncomfortable.
When we eat, our blood sugar goes up so we literary feel filled and better.
Of course, we love to eat sweets and our blood sugar gets raised, we feel happy, well, temporarily.
Not only that, but also digestion is a bigger deal than we think even though we don’t think it in the way when you are younger. A lot of us try to eat less in older age because of the stress on our digestive systems.
Yes, our energy is taken from ourselves when we digest so we feel loosened and tired. However we still over-eat because eating will ease our tension and stress too.
Also our bodies tend to focus on the digestion when we eat, then we don’t have so much blood around our thoughts or brain. We get so sleepy after the lunch break because of it.
The more we eat, more difficult we focus on our work in the afternoon.
Eating surely distracts ourselves from something we don’t want to think of or ease our tension and slow down our thoughts and feelings too.
Furthermore, a lot of us enjoy eating. Not only our physiological effects of relaxation from eating, but also we enjoy delicate sense of taste too.
That is why we tend to find eating as a solution when we are stressed so we definitely could use eating to ease our stress when we love to eat anyway.
Stress tends to make us larger. The stress is not only about stress from outside but also inner stress such as negative feelings about ourselves relating to our self esteem.
The more we have stress and negativity, the more we will need our comfort and relief like eating so we tend to over-eat.
We need a lot of pleasure when we want to lift something very heavy like our negativity and eating is one of our favorite solutions in many occasions.
It is not always eating and there are other things. For example, we smoke, we gamble, we do drugs, we shop, we over-work, we over-drink, we need excessive sex, and so on. We have solutions in each one of us to ease ourselves in the sense.
As I say, in fact, our brain remembers bad things much better than good things in our lives. We can’t forget bad things easier because it will risk our safety when we easily forget about bad experience and feelings in the past.
Our nature tells us that we should remember bad things, especially dangerous things in our lives to avoid same type of risk badly affect our lives. That is why traumatic experiences are hard to forget.
People say when we get older, we get wise. It is not true, I say. I say that we naturally lose our positive attitude when we get older because we remember strongly about bad experience in the past in our nature.
That is why it is more challenging for any therapists to give effective therapy to older clients in general.
Of course, everything is not that simple though it is over all true that it is same theory as old dogs don’t learn roll over easily. We tend to lose flexibility so as positive attitude when we get older.
That is why as I said, older people are more careful because they are aware of risks, which oftentimes described as wisdom. Although it is true that extremely carefulness tend to come from anxiety and those people are not usually challengers.
In the theory above, I say that we have more negativity in us when we get older. Then we will need more relief and lift when we have more negativity in us too.
When we need to reduce more of our negativity, we will use more relief such as eating. Then we gain weight, we smoke more, we gamble more and the behaviors become noticeable so we may feel need of outside help.
A lot of people say that they eat much more when they quit smoking so they gained weight because they enjoy food better without cigarettes. However in my belief, relief of negativity, which was cigarette in the case was taken away from them so they replaced it to eating.
Weight gain is just phenomenon and true problem is our own negativity needing some relief.
In the conclusion, reducing negativity in us is a solution to maintain our healthy weight at the end.
I took care of my own negativity in hypnotherapy since I ran into hypnosis so I kicked habits of repeated over-eating step by step. As the result, I lost weight.
After diet, we have rebound. Because it was just a diet and it was limited period of time. We have to keep good habits such as right portion to eat and exercise to keep our healthy weight ideally throughout our lives.
It’s always the negativity is a blame needing a relief of eating so it will be hard for us to maintain our healthy diet and exercise habits when we still keep negativity in us.
That is why we need mind detox that reduces our own negativity causing all the problems we have.
Hypnotherapy makes negativity reduce easy! Now on the lock down due to COVID-19 pandemics, I only offer Skype sessions. That means that you can access to me from any side of this world!
I am looking forward to meeting you in Skype!
Have a wonderful day!
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