Overeating Causes Overeating

Once the Train is Rolling it's Hard to Stop

I’m in New York for a conference and I’ve been eating more food than I would normally have if I weren’t away at an event. There are open bar dinner and cocktail parties with free food. Free chocolates all over the trade show floor. And a constant invite to go out and have breakfast, brunch, lunch, dinner, late night snack etc with so many different people.

It’s very easy to end up overeating at events like these.

No matter what starts the overeating train going it seems that a few days of overeating are enough to keep the overeating train chugging along.

In other words, it seems that overeating itself is enough to keep you overeating.

It might be a psychological thing, it probably has to do with eating too many high sugar, fat, and salt foods (like pizza). But overeating can become a habit if you don’t stop it before it gets rolling.

I’ll be taking it light today to put the breaks on this patter because the past couple days were a bit too much. But if I don’t consciously do this today it could easily turn into a week of overdoing it.

This is the sort of thing that can easily get away on you if you’re not paying attention to it.

If you know you’ve overdoing it a bit with your eating, stop and take a moment to re-evaluate what your goals are and decide if you need to purposely take a day to go light and put the breaks on the overeating train.

John

Posted by johnbarban in Exercise, Weight Loss

Tags: gaining weight, Overeating |3 Comments

3 Responses to “Overeating Causes Overeating”

Jordan D. Says:
August 17th, 2010 at 12:51 pm
This is exactly what I’m dealing with right now. I had been dieting pretty hard for 4-5 months, so I thought I’d take a diet break for a week, maybe two at the most. A month later, and I still haven’t started it up yet! lol. I’ve gone from 193-4 up to 198-203, depending on the day (obviously a lot of fluctuation there.) I find dieting to be pretty easy, but starting a diet to be very difficult. Once I get it going again, I doubt I’ll be taking any more diet breaks! lol. It really opens up the floodgates. I had no problem being strict every single day.

And it may also mean that transitioning to maintenance mode will be an interesting challenge, when I finally get there.

You mentioned high fat/ salt/ sugar foods, there’s definitely something to be said for that. They pose a greater challenge to willpower than other foods, and they’re more calorie dense, as well. Double whammy. Of course, one can gain weight overeating any type of food as long as one creates a calorie surplus. But aggressive flavors + calorie density can be a recipe for disaster.
Grangers710 Says:
August 26th, 2010 at 2:42 pm
I’m currently doing this now. Been overeating for 5 days and it seems like there is no end in sight. I think the biggest problem is that I dont have a short term goal, but only the long term goal of getting to my golden shoulders.

Time to re-evaluate some short term goals and get my head back on track. Great post and very beneficial at my current state.
Overeating causes overeating Says:
August 26th, 2010 at 4:20 pm
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