Everyone loves eating! After all, eating releases endorphins into our bloodstream, which makes us feel happier.
This is why eating is addictive: it can temporarily satisfy us when we feel alone or in need.
When we’re addicted to food, we can gain weight. Our bodies can begin to store calories that we can’t burn off. We can start to feel ashamed, then eat more to feel better, then lose our ability to workout.
If we’re not careful, the cycle continues and we stay unhealthy.
Today, we’re going to talk about the harmful side effects of overeating. We’ll then give you some pointers on how to counteract this issue before it causes irreversible damage to your health. Let’s first check out the side effects of overeating.
You Can Feel Weird Physically
We overeat because we want to keep fueling our body with the positive sensations that come with food.
But that feeling fizzles out very quickly, leaving us lethargic, gassy, and bloated. We may even get intense heartburn. Yuck!
In this state, your blood redirects to your digestive system, since that system is working overtime to flush out the bulk of food you just consumed. This means that less of your blood goes to the brain and muscles, so your body enters a dormant state.
These feelings discourage you from doing the activities that can help burn those extra calories, like running and lifting weights. You end up staying inactive until your body is hungry again and reverts back to food once more.
Your Risk of Disease Increases
Eating excessively adds extra strain to your body.
More weight on your bones, joints, and ligaments means they will deteriorate faster than normal. The last thing you want is to be frail and fragile at a young age.
Overeating will also block your arteries, reducing blood flow and increasing your risk of heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and high triglycerides levels.
You could also be in danger of suffering from cancer, sleep apnea, breathing disorders, type 2 diabetes, menstrual issues, infertility, and gallbladder disease.
The closer you inch toward obesity, the harder it is to reverse your habits and avert these health issues.
You Risk Depression
We often cope with stress by overeating. When overeating becomes our main stress-relief technique, it puts us at risk for depression.
The fact is, when we eat to reduce the pain stemming from issues in our lives, we’re not addressing the issues themselves. We try solving deeply rooted problems with the temporary fix of eating.
When overeating becomes a habit, it only magnifies any depression we may experience. And that depression fuels your eating habits.
Now that you’ve recognized signs that you may be overeating, let’s take a look at some proactive ways of scaling back your eating habits.
Portion Control Can Help
One of the biggest mistakes people make in eating is that they don’t limit the size of their portions.
It’s difficult to keep track of how much you eat when you’re actually eating. Before you know it, you’ve consumed enough calories to make up two meals!
Don’t rely on your willpower to halt you from eating too much; take action! Prep your meals a week in advance so you have a fixed meal to eat. Also, try eating away from any other food besides what you’ve prepared. This decreases the likelihood that you cave in and reach for that extra bag of chips after you’ve finished your meal.
Exercise Works Magic
There are so many physical benefits of exercise that it would take us days to list them all here. Exercise lowers your risk of various heart-related diseases and maintains your health and fitness, but even that is just scratching the surface.
Exercising doesn’t make overeating vanish, but it certainly does change your mindset about eating. When you work out, you feel more obliged to eat healthy so that your exercise isn’t ruined.
Plus, exercise helps you keep a positive, consistent mood and lowers your overall stress levels, which helps knock out the temptation to overeat.
Specifically, Fit Body’s HIIT (high-intensity interval training) sessions are the most efficient methods for burning fat, toning up, and getting your energy back. Come check out a class at a location near you!
Accountability is HUGE
When we fall short of our own expectations, it’s easier to deal with because we’re not letting anyone down but ourselves.
But when someone keeps us accountable, we try much harder to succeed because we don’t want to disappoint them.
Incorporate a friend or family member into your health routine. Have them regularly check in with you to make sure you’re not overeating.
But…you have to be honest. That’s the only way this works.
Being more honest with someone else can make you more honest with yourself. So you’ll know when to stop yourself from taking that extra cookie or slice of pizza.
If you really want to tap into the power of accountability, you should find a group of people who are also trying to get in shape.
Having a group at your side multiplies the effect, and if everyone is chasing the same goal that makes it even easier to stay on track.
This is one of the core building blocks of Fit Body Boot Camp. We run group boot camps specifically so that everyone in the group can benefit from the power of having a positive atmosphere and a shared goal.
Living with Discipline Helps a Lot
If you increase your personal discipline in one area of life, that discipline will spill over into other areas of life.
You might want to incorporate a personal discipline that’s not even directly related to fitness. You could commit to going to bed and waking up earlier, and doing it consistently so that you have more energy throughout the day and more control over your time.
If you do something like that, it will become much easier to apply that same level of discipline to your personal fitness.
That’s why it’s important to master discipline. Set standards for your own behavior that will give you the freedom to be the most beautiful, powerful, and joyful version of yourself.
The more you sharpen your resolve, the more ignoring your indulgences will become second nature.
That’s a huge part of dealing with temptations like overeating – the key is always in taking away the power of your cravings by crafting your lifestyle in a healthier direction.
