5 Reasons You Can’t Stop Eating Food and What To Do About It

On their own, potatoes are an excellent source of nutrients. But when you add oil,
salt and sugar, it becomes addictive and you tend to overeat with this
combination. Tomato sauce contains sugar and salt, the chips contain salt, and
the chips are fried in oil. It’s been proven that this combination stimulates
the emotional part of the brain which makes you want to keep eating to stay in
emotional bliss.

Fast food restaurants have caught onto this and are capitalizing on it. The next time you start craving a food, consider the ingredients. Chances are, it’s got fat, sugar and salt in it. What can you do from a practical point of view to help yourself? Either don’t eat the chips, or simply forfeit the tomato sauce. To be honest, I have found that when you tend to overeat, it’s best scratching out all junk food completely and just making substitutes at home. So you can still have a burger and chips, but if it’s homemade, you control what goes into it.

In days gone by, food and eating was simple. We have made it so complex with so many ingredients, that we tend to overeat because our senses kind of become intoxicated with all those additions to what was a simple food. For instance, in the old days, people would simply pick fruit off a tree, or have a chunk of goats cheese and homemade bread. Now if we have a sandwich, we load butter or processed margarine to it, the bread is filled with bad stuff and the cheese comes from cows that have been put on hormones to make them produce more. All this wreaks havoc with our systems and causes overeating.

I have never overeaten on things like carrots and apples, have you? So what can you do if you want to still enjoy going to restaurants but still lose weight? Have a plan. Plan to eat half a portion, or plan to eat something simpler, like a salad and chicken. Further to that, for everyday life, try to eat less complicated. Grab a banana for breakfast. Carry some nuts and dried fruit for a snack. Decrease unnecessary ingredients and try to stay away from processed foods. Simple is the key.

In times past, we used to chew a lot more before swallowing. Now its just about halved. The reason? Our food has become too processed and does not require much chewing. Think about it: how much chewing do you need to do to get through a carrot, and how much do you need to do to get through a burger? The problem with chewing too little is that when we eat fast, we override the body’s “full” signals and just keep eating. The answer is either to eat as much unprocessed food as possible, or to concentrate on chewing slower and more.

I had a thing for McDonalds hash browns. Every time I drew close to a McDonalds drive through, I would think of those hash browns. I could taste them. There is no way I would advocate chucking all junk food, but if you are mastered by them, you may need to cut them out for a while, so that you can begin to dominate your senses instead of them dominating you. Once I had stopped eating McDonalds for 3 weeks, I no longer thought of the hash browns and I was content to eat homemade food.

One day you have a bad day at the office and when you get home, you decide to head for the refrigerator and the ice cream. No problem. The next day, you get home and you remember eating ice cream, so you whack out the tub again and have some. What you’re doing it starting a bad associative habit and if you don’t put a stop to it soon, it is going to control you. Every time you arrive home from work, you are going to head to the refrigerator for ice cream.

By all means have a bad day which results in ice cream, but don’t allow it to become a habit.