How many times have you tried to solve the enigma of overweightness and discover what's standing in your way of losing that pesky excess weight? How many times have you wondered, "Where's that hidden, secret button that when pressed will make you be and feel just like naturally thin women?"
In the coming post, you'll become familiar with the forces behind the scenes that keep us continuing to eat more than we actually need and therefore overweight. You'll also come to realize why overeating and being overweight are totally not your fault. Then you might be wondering, "Is there a light at the end of the tunnel?" (Spoiler alert… There is!)
So let's begin….
Nowadays it's becoming more well-known that amongst the general population, the reason for gaining fat is that we consume more calories than we use, meaning: we eat more than what we really need. Of course it's a bit different in the case of pregnancy and post-pregnancy weight, but we can still ponder the question of "What causes us to overeat?"
Many people will tell us that it's a matter of self-control – that I don’t hold myself back enough, that I cave in too easily, that I'm intentionally sabotaging myself… And what about me? What do I do?
I accuse myself of not having enough determination or will power, of being "lazy" and too busy – basically I kinda beat myself up about it - so the whole thing's just too much for me and I just can't pull it off.
Well guess what?
All of the above are TOTALLY inaccurate. It's just not true!
It's really important that you understand that over-eating is not your fault and is not a matter of determination! Once you gain clarity about where it comes from, you'll be able to let go of feeling bad about yourself and finally get on the right track towards mastering it.
In this post you'll discover the real reason we all keep falling prey to this trap of over-eating, and I promise you that you will be surprised from what you discover.
This information is life changing.
It's a total game changer.
Don't miss it!
So what causes us to overeat?
The first answer to that is Brainwashing.
Brainwashing is a tricky issue, and why is that? Because with brainwashing, the beliefs of another are implanted into our brains for the interest of someone else and are then experienced as our own beliefs and truths. We don't even know that it's happened and we completely identify with it, even though it wasn't "ours" to begin with. To undo this, we first need a strong wake up call to acknowledge that this has happened. Then we need a lot of strength and clarity to recognize these various "untruths" residing within us, followed by an equal measure of fortitude to replace them with new ones.
It's important to highlight here that, where food is concerned, we've been living in an era where massive industries exchange billions of dollars for the purpose of making us dependenton the foods they produce so we'll continue to increase our consumption of them more and more. Certainly you're familiar with how most advertising seeks to make us think or feel that we must consume a certain product or we won't be popular / successful / happy / attractive / healthy, etc. Despite a growing awareness of the presence of subliminal messaging in marketing, it still continues to work on us fairly well. We almost have no choice but to buy into it, as it's working at a very deep, subconscious level. But there are other marketing strategies that are even more deceptive, affecting your choices more wisely and more effectively. These are lesser known and harder to identify.
Here I'm referring to paid studies.
In this article from the New York Times, writer Roni Karni Rabin exposes this type of strategy, citing an attempt by the alcohol industry to fund studies for the purpose of deceptive marketing:
According to this article, five major alcohol companies in the United States paid the National Institute of Health (NIH) $100 million to produce a study that would claim that one alcoholic drink a day protects us against heart attacks and stroke. In this case, an investigation in the NIH revealed a conflict of interest and disqualified the study. But things don't always go that way. Many times this sort of corrupt activity goes unnoticed, resulting in us getting put further under a spell of false propaganda, believing it to be a truth. And not just a simple truth, but a truth that's actually supported by "science".
Many institutes like the NIH are fed by such "donations" and therefore will make great efforts to "deliver the goods," so to speak, thus creating the phenomenon of biased studies.
When such a study is completed, its sponsors make sure that the results are published with huge distribution in the most reputable magazines, and that's how we are then fed this misleading information through the guise of solid, scientific findings.
There are so many examples of this type of advertising strategy, which means that we are exposed to so much misleading information that gets dropped into our brains and then stored there as truth.
You can find this in the milk industry, the meat industry, and also in the industry of super foods and various alternative health foods. The two latter, in order to increase sales, market their products not only as nutritionally rich (which is usually true) but also as the ultimate medicine to cure Everything. It's not unusual to encounter an article, many times seemingly scientific, that describes a specific product or food as the cure for all the world's illnesses: from hair loss, to dementia, to fatigue, impotence, cardiovascular diseases and even cancer. All in one.
As a matter of fact, that's exactly what many of these industries are trying to do – to sell us one form of medication or one pill that treats everything. And this medication / pill oftentimes is FOOD!
Just imagine for a moment that there's one, single pill that both stimulates you, so as to fight fatigue, and relaxes you when you're tense, or that treats both constipation and diarrhea, and so on and so on…
In reality, though, it really doesn't make sense!
These days, however, FOOD has actually become this "one pill".
The bottom line is that we have come to use food for almost EVERYTHING except as just food.
And a significant reason for this lies within all the sophisticated marketing strategies that cause us to believe that FOOD is the answer to everything.
The consequence of all this is that new connections are constantly being made in our brains linking food with… you name it… and this results in more and more reasons for us to eat more and more.
So we actually consume food not only for the purpose of nourishing ourselves, but for another 'million' contrived reasons that actually have nothing to do with food. As such, we continue to increase our food consumption (and therefore our issues with weight) while the food industries increase their incomes.
Yes, it might be quite overwhelming to hear that this is the reality and that this is one of the things standing behind your unconscious inability
Another strategy of brainwashing is the one of stuff that's disguised as food, or even worse, disguised as "healthy" food.
When we look at all the industrial snacks, sweets, candies, or junk food, we can completely understand that this food is just not good for us. But did you know that many, many foods that we were educated to think are extremely healthy or super supportive in losing weight are very much not that?
Just take a look at the following table:
This table summarizes the sugary substances that disrupt all our biological mechanisms related to eating and cause us to overeat again and again and again.
The worst thing here is that most of these foods are considered by us to be healthy and nutritious. And why is that? Because most of our lives we've been brainwashed / educated to think that way.
Most of us don't have doubt that whole bread is extremely healthy and has to be included in our daily menu, as well as pastas made from whole flour, various forms of rice, energy bars, breakfast cereals, and all the "healthy" sweeteners.
But the fact is that the items from the table above are not healthy at the quantities we're used to eating them, and they're not supporting your weight loss in the way you've been programmed to think. In fact, it's highly recommended that you gradually decrease their consumption to the minimum in order to gain control over your eating.
If you were to ask people from the field of establishment nutrition, such as dieticians, many of them still hold the position that these foods are essential to the process of weight-loss. That's because they're relying on old, outdated information that for years already has been called into question. (This may explain why so many people who enlist the aid of a dietitian ultimately fail to lose weight or to keep the results for an extended period of time).
The bottom line here is that most of us are so totally convinced that the foods from the table above are beneficial for our health, because we've been brainwashed by people who truly believe it.
So it's a bit of food for thought…
The next answer to the question what causes us to overeat is:
The reward mechanism and our physiological dependence on sugar
Big words?
Let's break it down.
The reward mechanism is the mechanism in our brains that's responsible for producing the sensation of pleasure as a reaction to specific stimulants like:
And also from using drugs, alcohol and other addictive substances.
The reward mechanism affects our behavior by encouraging behaviors that bring a positive reward (pleasure) and therefore increase the chance that these behaviors will be repeated in the future. The reward mechanism has an important role in the positive processes of learning and behavioral reinforcement, but also in producing addictive behaviors.
If we take a look at the MRI scans of different types of brains, we can see what differs between the brains of a food-addicted (obese) person and that of someone of average weight.
The following image shows MRI scans of four different brains:
1. The brain of an average-weight person (Normal Brain)
2. The brain of an obese person
3. The brain of a cocaine user
4. The brain of an alcoholic
The different colors illustrate differing intensities of reactions in the brain. Certain stimulation in a normal brain results in a high response in the brain, as depicted by the red in the images above, meaning this person is able to experience pleasure from a an average stimulation.
But having this same stimulation in brains of addictive people will result in a much lower reaction, as depicted by the yellow in the images, meaning these people have difficulty feeling joy or pleasure.
For them, in order to feel pleasure there needs to be a much more intense stimulation, meaning more alcohol, more drugs, or more FOOD.
Yup. You heard correctly. Food is used by many as a substance, much like drugs and alcohol, to stimulate the brain strongly enough in order to feel pleasure. The type of food that's the most problematic in this case are the sugary ones. These foods are the ones that have the most negative influence on our reward mechanism. They throw it out of balance and make us behave like addicts. It doesn't matter if these foods have no calories, zero fat, and are marketed as "health" foods. The truth is that simply by tasting some form of sweetness in our mouths, they disrupt the reward mechanism and make us consume much more food than we really need.
I know this can be quite overwhelming. So please take some time to breathe into it.
I'd like to reemphasize that the intention here is not to get you to completely exclude sugary foods from your life. The purpose of this sharing is just to make you aware of their effects on the body so you might find the desire within yourself to slowly and gradually decrease their consumption. Doing so will only increase your success in losing that excess weight.
So what else causes us to overeat? Here we come to the third cause for overeating which is:
Frequency of eating and hormonal balance
Again these might sound like big words and again we're gonna break it down.
The most surprising fact about overeating is that it really isn't our fault not only mentally but also physiological.
Inside of our bodies there's a whole system of hormones that controls the way we eat, and if this system is not correctly tuned, the result is that our eating is not in balance. The good news is that we have the tools to recalibrate the system and to redirect it in a way that will lead us towards more balanced eating.
To demonstrate how this works, let's imagine for a moment that our body's energy is a bonfire.
In order to keep the fire burning you have two main choices:
One – You can toss dry leaves, weeds and twigs into it and as a result the fire will grow rapidly with a lot of smoke and sparks. But as quickly as the fire is ignited, that's how quickly it will die down.
Two – You can put boards, thick branches, and logs into the fire and get a nice, slow, constant blaze that burns for a long time without demanding much attention or requiring much maintenance.
When it comes to planning a balanced diet, we want to put boards and logs into our fire and not leaves and twigs. In this metaphor, the boards and logs represent nutritious foods that allow us to eat a few meals a day and still feel satisfied, satiated, and energized. This type of food together with a reduction in the amount and frequency of meals activates a hormonal reaction that suppresses the appetite and increases the rate of fat burning.
Leaves and twigs act in the opposite way. Here the metaphor is likened to sugary foods; meaning pastas, rice, breads, pastries, sweets, and any other foods containing carbohydrates, sugar, or sugar substitutes. These foods activate other hormones that make us need more meals during the day and cause us to feel hungry more often.
The solution is then to start basing our eating more on logs and less on twigs, allowing us to be satisfied and energized for much longer periods of time and (as a convenient byproduct) to dramatically reduce our food consumption without making any special effort. It's just a natural result.
The last thing I'd like to speak about is our habit of eating many small meals during the day.
To explain why this habit is problematic, let's get familiar with the hormone leptin - "The satiation hormone."
Leptin is created in the fat cells and is released when we eat. Once it reaches the brain, it signals satiation - that it's time to stop eating. The more that our brain responds to the leptin, the more we feel full and satisfied. This is the body's natural reaction when the hormones are in balance. However what happens over time when we've been steadily increasing our quantities and now eat five or six times a day? After all, for most of our lives we've been taught that this is the right way to eat, no? Three solid meals with snacks in between.
Well what happens then is that we eat and eat and eat, and as a result the leptin is secreted over and over and over in greater and greater quantities. Over time the body gradually develops something called "RESISTANCE" to the leptin, which means that the brain isn't "listening" to it anymore.
Initially our bodies were calibrated to the days when food was scarce, therefore, when the brain meets with this flood of hormones that says, "Hey there's plenty of food now, so you can stop eating," the brain doesn't believe it and instead interprets this flooding as an imbalance of the hormones. It thinks that there's something wrong with the hormones rather than hearing that there's actually enough food which would then allow us to stop eating. Then what happens is that when we eat and the fat cells release leptin, we don't feel satisfied.
A study that examined the influence of leptin on weight gain found that mice who were fed a high-fat diet, produced an enzyme that blocks receptors for the hormone leptin. This enzyme blocks leptin from binding to its receptors which would otherwise signal to the brain that the stomach is full. As a consequence, the mice didn't stop eating and instead became obese (1). They ate round the clock and preferred eating over going to sleep.
What we don't understand here is that WE ARE, in fact, these lab-mice. Educated to eat five to six meals a day that are composed of the typical, western diet, unintentionally through our own doing we are the ones who are causing the leptin receptors to be blocked and therefore causing ourselves to feel hungry virtually all the time.
This constant hunger can be solved by first having "logs" (nutritious and satisfying foods) be the basis of our menu, and then by changing our habit of eating many small meals during the day to eating two or three main meals. This new behavior will allow us to achieve hormonal balance and as a result gain control over our eating.
So there you have it… The three biggest culprits in the battle of the bulge.
Ok. So now that we have all this information and we're beginning to understand more about why we eat so much and have difficulty controlling it, what's the next step for us to take? It's to rid our bodies from all the substances and habits that have been putting them out of balance in the first place, and to adopt a lifestyle and mindset that support natural hormonal balance and weight-loss.
For this purpose, I've created the online course of BLOSSOM – a 16-week journey that takes you step-by-step through a mental transformation, followed by powerful, practical tools to ultimately implement a deep change in your relationship with food as well as with your own body. The end result of this journey is you being free from that excess weight, you falling in love in your NEWLY SHAPED BODY, and your baby gaining the benefits of the best breast milk around.
So join NOW to BLOSSOM for free and start experiencing yourself in the most awesome way than ever before.
