5 Factors That Cause Overeating

This won’t come as a surprise to anyone, but it’s a well-known fact that overeating will make you gain extra, unnecessary weight. This process is usually triggered by unburned calories getting stored in your body in the form of good old-fashioned fat. According to fitness experts, 3,500 unburned calories add up to about 1 pound (or 0.45 kg, if you’re using the metric system).

So, of course, overeating is a significant impediment if you’re hoping to lose weight, rendering your diet and training regime completely useless. Apart from trying to abstain ourselves from doing it, it’s also important to inform ourselves on the less obvious factors that can lead to overeating.

• Sleep deprivation

Sleep is important not only for your health but also if you long for a slim figure. Sleep deprivation drains your body of leptin, a hormone that warns you when your body got the necessary amount of food it requires. There’s also a psychological factor to this because when you’re tired and grumpy, you’re more likely to compensate for that with large meals.

• Alcohol

While alcohol itself won’t contribute to the weight gain, the sensation of being drunk will make you less attentive in regards to how much you eat. Then there are the calories that alcohol contains, which combined with your late-night fast food binge with your friends is a surefire way to gain a few extra pounds.

• Stress

Modern life can be very stressful, and most people forget to sit back and zone out. From a medical and biological point of view, stress can perturb your natural hormonal balance and lead to weight gain. So, in other words, don’t let your annoying co-workers get to you if you want to keep your waistline from reaching an undesired size.

• Friends (or peer pressure)

Peer pressure can affect one’s life in a multitude of ways.  If you have people in your immediate circle of friends who eat anything, anytime because they don’t care about their weight and cite a fast metabolism as a reason for not gaining weight, don’t adopt the same lifestyle. If your best friend possesses the ability to eat fast food every day without getting big, that doesn’t mean you can do it as well. Everybody is unique in how it functions and processes food.

• Depression

Everybody reacts differently to depression, but one of the most common side effects is to try to drive the misery away by raiding the fridge. When depression installs, the brain will encourage, even force you, to eat high amounts of food that will boost your mood on the short-term, such as sweets, ice cream, fast food and other high-fat products. If you’re feeling blue and the fridge gives you a wink, try to abstain yourself from responding to its advances, as hard and brutal as it might feel.

In conclusion, if you want to keep yourself from overeating, give this article a read and inform yourself on the factors that might cause it. Be more cautious, develop a reasonable set of healthy habits and try to relax.