2 Nutrition Mistakes That Cause You to Overeat – Video

If you want to learn some clear and result-driven strategies to work with overeating, then you’ve arrived at the right place. Emily Rosen, Chief Operating officer for the Institute for the Psychology of Eating delivers simple and clear guidance around the easy-to-fix mistakes that can cause us to overeat. This isn’t about telling you that you’re a “willpower weakling” by the way. This presentation is positive and factual. Her style is easygoing, thoughtful and straightforward, and you might learn something that you can put into action right away!

Here is a transcript of this week’s video:

Hi. I’m Emily Rosen, Chief Operating Officer for the Institute of the Psychology of Eating. Today’s topic is two nutrition mistakes that cause you to overeat. There are a lot of people who are doing their best to manage their appetite. I’m talking about overeating, binge eating, emotional eating, and any ways that we find ourselves consuming foods against our own best wishes. You’ll hear me say time and time again that none of these challenges have anything to do with willpower. In fact, there’s a nutritional dimension to appetite that impacts us in a powerful way. Far too many people make the same mistakes when it comes to doing our best to find our natural appetite. I’m going to share with you two of the most important appetite de-regulators. These are substances that we consume that will predictably have us eating more. Here we go.

The first is sugar.

Smart nutritionists and practitioners have known for about forty years through clinical observation and buried research that sugar can have an absolutely profound effect on stimulating appetite. When I say sugar, what I mean are all kinds of sugary drinks, anything with high fructose corn syrup, certain kinds of dried fruits, candy, breakfast cereal, juices, anything with an excessive amount of sucrose, fructose, or glucose. The moment the brain senses sugar, there’s a feed-forward loop that gets activated. This means that when we taste sugar, we want more sugar. It’s simply how the substance stimulates the brain. There’s an evolutionary reason for this. Whatever natural sugar was available in the environment, which usually means fruit, it means it was summer and winter is around the corner. Let’s stock up and eat as much of the sugary food as we can, gain a bunch of weight and use that stored fat to help us get through the winter. Our brain is very smart. The problem is, we have access to sugar day in and day out. The more we eat, the more we want. This has nothing to do with you being a willpower weakling. It has everything to do with your hard-wiring working in a very specific way. Of course, the remedy for the appetite-inducing effects of sugar is quite simple — eat dramatically less sugar in your diet. If you could eliminate it for at least two weeks, your life could be changed forever. It doesn’t mean that you can never have a single drop of sugar ever again. It’s about learning to consume it in the amounts that are small, infrequent, and that don’t hijack your appetite.

The next nutritional mistake that makes us overeat is the consumption of poor-quality carbohydrates. I’m talking about white bread, white flour, excess poor quality pasta, breakfast cereals, cookies, crackers, chips, and more. Once again, this excess amount of carbohydrates in our system stimulates us to want more. One of the reasons is that these are empty calories. These foods are dramatically nutrient deficient. Even if you eat a large amount of white bread, it is easy to notice that you’ll still want more. The body is screaming for nutrition. For many people, wheat products have an effect on the body that actually produces a slight chemical high and the desire to eat more. This is often attributed to the protein component of these products, namely gluten. Once again, if you let go of such foodstuffs for several weeks, your appetite and your life will change. What’s fascinating is that there’s a study that’s been repeated over and over that keeps yielding the same, predictable result. When people start their day with a meal that’s purely carbohydrate, whether it’s oatmeal, poor quality breakfast cereal, croissants, muffins, juice, cereal, etc. those people will eat more during the day. They will have a larger appetite, and they will tend to crave more carbohydrates and more sugar throughout the day. Compare this to people who start their day with a breakfast that’s more protein-dense and healthy fat-dense and no such spike in carbohydrate craving is seen. In addition, those on a carbohydrate-only breakfast often report less ability to focus, more mood swings, and an appetite that feels more driven by out of control. This is all about finding ways to support yourself through good nutrition and creating a day that allows us to be the best possible of who we are. This is not about demonizing specific foods. It’s about getting clear about what works and what doesn’t for your system. It’s about getting clear about what’s natural for the body and what isn’t.

Life is not trying to limit you.

Life is not trying to make your day bland and unexciting by telling you that you cannot eat sugar or junk carbohydrates. Life is teaching you what’s natural and what works. From there, the choice is yours. We can never attain our natural appetite and natural weight if we’re participating in a nutritional strategy that’s indeed unnatural to the body. This isn’t rocket science. It’s simply how life on planet earth works. It’s not about finding your appetite. It’s about welcoming foods into your life that create an easy experience of eating. It’s about letting go of foods that adversely impact your mind, your appetite, and your ability to regular your own diet. It’s time for each of us to do the things we need to do to claim our power and be the best possible version of who we can be in this world.

I hope this was helpful. To learn more, please go to www.PsychologyOfEating.com. The Institute for the Psychology of Eating offers the most innovative and professional trainings, public programs, conferences, online events, and much more. Through our Eating Psychology Coach Certification training, you can grow a new career and help your clients break through the most compelling eating challenges of our times. If you’re focused on your own eating and health, the Institute offers a great selection of one-of-a-kind opportunities to take a big leap forward in your relationship with food. We are proud to be international leaders in online and live education events that are designed to create the breakthroughs you want most. Our public and professional programs are powerful, results-oriented, and embrace all of who we are as eaters — body, mind, heart, and soul.

For questions, please email us at info@psychologyofeating.com. We’ll be sure to get back to you. Thank you so much.

In the comments below please let us know what you have found helpful when you find yourself overeating. We read every comment and do our best to respond. We love hearing your thoughts!