10 Shocking Facts about OverEating you need to know, to STOP doing it!

OVEReating Definition: Eating more food than what our body needs, or eating more than what is healthy, resulting in weight gain leading to obesity. It may be regarded as an eating disorder if it is compulsive overeating or binge eating.

If you are looking for help on how to stop Overeating, you first need to understand the meaning of overeating and what causes it. Let’s look at a few everyday scenarios which will make it clear to you about how much eating is overeating:

Scenario 1:

You are having your dinner and feel that you have finished your share. You find that a little sabzi (Indian Kari) is left in the bowl, only to avoid storing the leftovers in the fridge, you quickly gobble it down … that is overeating.

Scenario 2:

You have finished your share of food, but then notice that your kid or your spouse has some leftovers on their plate. Since you feel that throwing away food is not good (as we are always told to respect food), you end up eating it yourself… that is overeating. 🙃

Scenario 3: 

Your spouse or your kids come back from office/ school. You find that they have not finished their lunch. You sulk but don’t want the food to go waste, so you eat it yourself. (If ever my husband came home with leftover lunch I used to love it and ate the whole thing, a habit I got from my father, he loved our leftover tiffin 🙈🙈) and later eat the full dinner too… that is again Overeating.

Scenario 4:

You are eating your food and it tastes really good. You decide to have 1/2 roti (Indian Flatbread) more (Common, just 1/2 roti, what harm can it do.. right?)… but it is Overeating. Remember you have already had your share!

Scenario 5:

You are wandering around the house and open the refrigerator. You pop whatever comes in your hand (normally they are sweets or fruits), in our mouth. Or you happen to be moving in the kitchen, you grab a handful of some namkeen (mixture) & eat it… now that is overeating too… ‘cause guys you are not hungry, just bored!

Scenario 6:

You finish your food and then have the dessert (fruits/ sweets.. all considered dessert here) 🤤🤤 … that sure is overeating. (Eating dessert after food, is a COMPLETE NO NO. To know when to have the sweets while you are trying to lose weight, please visit: Eat Sweets & Still Lose Weight)

Scenario 7:

Some rare dish is cooked and served in your home, which generally gets prepared occasionally, but it is also your favourite (like Chinese or pizza or dosa). In your greed, you end up stuffing yourself with it – ahem… overeating again 😈

Scenario 8:

You are at a party and after feeding your tummy with snacks, you end up having the main course as well (you are feeling bad for your hostess.. right? Poor lady had taken so many efforts) … Yes sir! that is overeating as well. 🤐🤐

Scenario 9:

You meet your friends at a kitty party or over a drink – you talk & eat, and eat & talk – that is overeating too. Here you are eating food only because it is kept there in front of you, you are not actually hungry, or at least not hungry after eating 2-3 servings.

Scenario 10:

After-dinner snacks, snacks while watching television or movie at a theatre or even chatting on phone or working on our laptop: At all these times we tend to overeat. Cause we are not thinking, we are just mindlessly overeating, which is also referred as distractive eating

I can continue on & on and give you much more such scenarios.

On many occasions, people think: We have very normal eating habits, but still we are gaining weight. Why? 🤔🤔 Well, I was one of them (before my weight loss). 🙈🙈 There is no sarcasm here, in their mind this is exactly what they seriously feel. This is what I felt too.

Leaving you with a few thoughts!

All events I have spoken about are our normal routine events of your everyday life. Our actions in these events are just reflex, we are not really thinking while we are performing these. When we are asked to count our food (like actually remember what we ate during the day), we forget to consider this food in our food count. So whether in the name of kids/ spouse leftovers, favourite food, friends gathering, time pass, we keep on eating food. This food is really unwanted and could have been easily avoided and which is really the key to weight gain.

In my next post, I shall talk about how we can ways we can prevent overeating and start eating to actually lose weight.

Will see you soon. Until the next post, XOXO.