I Wanted to Stop Overeating. My Solution Was the Problem.

Not long ago, I came across some journaling I had written years prior.

One of my journal entries included a list of things I wanted to change about myself. At the top of my list was: stop overeating.

At the time, I was frustrated by how often I ate until I was stuffed. This mostly happened at dinner. I’d be “good” all day and then blow it at night. 

Repeatedly eating until I was uncomfortably full not only caused me physical discomfort but also a lot of emotional distress. Feeling the aching pain of my straining stomach as I washed dishes triggered feelings of anger, regret, guilt and shame.

My Solution Was the Problem
For the rest of the night, I’d beat myself up, endlessly ruminating on my lack of self-control.

Why couldn’t I get it together and stop overeating? What was wrong with me?!

As I got ready for bed, I’d promise myself I wouldn’t do it again and devise a plan to put an end to it, everything from using a smaller plate to forgoing seconds. 

However, because my plans were driven by my diet mentality, including my restrictive approach to eating, they failed to change anything. I’d still end almost every dinner uncomfortably full and disappointed in myself.

What I didn’t understand at the time was that my attempts to eat less were driving my need to eat more. My solution was the problem!

Unmet Needs
There are always very valid reasons why we do what we do with food. More often than not, we’re trying to take care of unmet needs. 

When I learned to be curious about what needs I was trying to fulfill when I continued to eat past comfortable fullness, things began to shift for me.

I came to understand that my tendency to override my fullness cues was primarily driven by my very human need for nourishment, satisfaction and pleasure.

1/ Need for Nourishment
Although I thought I was being “good” with my eating throughout the day, the reality was that I wasn’t eating enough out of fear of weight gain. 

My nighttime overeating wasn’t due to a lack of willpower or self-discipline. It was my very wise body’s attempt to get its nourishment needs met, to make up for my daytime deprivation and protect itself from future food scarcity, something it had come to expect.

I was stuck in an exhausting cycle of starting every morning with the intent to be "good"—that is, eat very little—to compensate for the amount I ate the night before. Of course, this plan always backfired come dinnertime.

2/ Need for Satisfaction and Pleasure
Because I was so focused on eating low-calorie and “clean,” I pretty much ate the same “safe” foods every day. While I didn’t dislike what I was eating, my rigid diet lacked variety, novelty and deeply satisfying, pleasurable foods.

Satisfaction and pleasure are essential components of the eating experience and when these are missing, it’s natural to seek more food, even if you’re not hungry. 

I wasn’t ignoring my fullness signals because I was out of control with my eating. I kept eating because, in addition to making up for my undereating throughout the day, my bored taste buds were desperately and unsuccessfully searching for the satisfaction and pleasure we humans are naturally wired to pursue.

As I started to fully nourish my body and enjoy a wider range of pleasurable, satisfying foods (including my once-forbidden foods), my chronic overeating eventually subsided. I no longer ate every dinner as if it was my Last Supper. 

Still Stuffed Sometimes
This doesn’t mean I never eat until I’m stuffed. I absolutely do! 

Normal eating includes sometimes eating past comfortable fullness. In fact, I just did it a few nights ago.

The difference is that now when I find myself uncomfortably full, I’m able to compassionately identify the needs I was trying to take care of rather than ruthlessly chastise myself.

The other night, I was really tired. It felt easier to keep eating my dinner than to muster up the energy required to get up from the table and clean the kitchen. By continuing to eat, I was preserving my energy and honoring my need for rest.

Sometimes, I keep eating because the meal is so delicious I don’t want the pleasure to end. This can be particularly true if, for whatever reason, I haven’t experienced much pleasure lately. In this case, I intentionally prioritize my need for pleasure and am okay with feeling some stomach discomfort.

Other times, I find myself eating when I'm no longer hungry to avoid wasting food. This usually happens when it seems like there’s not enough food remaining to warrant saving it for leftovers. 

I grew up in a clean-your-plate household with depression-era parents so understandably food was rarely wasted. Occasionally, my need to honor this deeply instilled value outweighs my physical comfort.

Tending to Your Needs
From undereating, food restrictions and a pleasure deficiency to fatigue, stress, busyness and distraction, there are many different reasons why you, like me, may find yourself eating past the point of comfortable fullness.

When you gain a better understanding of the unmet needs driving your overeating, you can put your attention toward tending to these needs instead of focusing on controlling your food as diet culture teaches us to do.

Thankfully, unlike the days when I wrote that journal entry, these days when I do experience the uncomfortable sensation of being stuffed, I don’t dwell on it.

Instead, I briefly reflect on the needs I was trying to take care of, make myself as comfortable as possible (e.g., put on loose clothes, go on a gentle walk, take an antacid, etc.) and then just move on. 

While Everyone Was Dancing, I Was Sneaking Chocolate Truffles

While cleaning out a file drawer, I came across a document I created many years ago when I was dieting. It was a recording of my weight.

Seeing those numbers caused me to pause and reflect on the person I was when I was entrenched in diet culture.

It was not a pretty picture.

Although I couldn’t see it then, my obsession with dieting and weight loss turned me into someone I really didn't like.

My efforts to become more likable made me completely unlikeable.

At the time, however, I thought I was hot stuff. I walked around with an air of superiority because I believed I had cracked the code. I had finally achieved what so many others struggle to do: I lost weight.

But that wasn’t the only thing I lost.

I also lost touch with myself, my body, my values and what truly mattered.

Addicted to Weight Loss
When people complimented me on my smaller size, little did they know they were rewarding me for having a pretty disordered relationship with food, exercise and my body.

Unbeknownst to them, their praise encouraged me to pull the reins in tighter, to eat even less and exercise even more.

My original goal weight was no longer enough.

I had become addicted to losing weight and the admiration I was receiving. I didn’t want my high to end so I kept moving my target weight lower and lower.

Withdrew from the World
The more obsessed I became with micromanaging every morsel I ate and every mile I ran, the more I withdrew from the world.

I started stressing out about social events. My food and exercise rules made socializing, especially over food, very difficult.

Already a homebody, I found myself staying home even more. 

I avoided parties, happy hours and restaurant gatherings. I was scared to be around food that was off-limits and worried I’d lose control once I started eating, especially after a glass of wine. I fretted that if I stayed out too late it would hurt my running performance the next morning.

I also became anxious about traveling.

I feared going to places where I wouldn’t be able to control what food or running spots I’d have access to. I’d cram my carry-on bag with all my safe, allowable foods.

Sneaking and Bingeing
As my list of illegal foods grew, I began playing hide-and-eat.

I started sneaking my forbidden foods and eating them in secret—often at night while standing in the kitchen in the dark.

I was ashamed to be seen eating anything “bad,” especially the large quantities of it I craved. I worried about getting caught and tarnishing my super-disciplined, healthy eater image—an identity I took a lot of pride in.

Because I was depriving myself so much, my secret eating took on a binge-like, Last Supper quality.

I’d urgently stuff cookies into my mouth all while telling myself “What the hell, I might as well go for it because I’m never going to let myself do this again.”

Relationships Suffered
With most of my time, energy and headspace focused on controlling my weight, my relationships suffered.

When I hung out with friends, I was often preoccupied with thoughts about what I shouldn't eat, what I wanted to eat and how my body looked.

My rigid rules also started to drive my boyfriend away. Understandably, he grew increasingly frustrated with my resistance to eating certain foods, my insistence on exercising every day, my reluctance to socialize, my mood swings, and my need for complete control.

I was no longer the fun-loving, easygoing gal he once knew.

Completely Different Person
I was now a person who would contact a food manufacturer to express my outrage when they increased the calorie count on their soy crisps.

I was now someone who, while everyone else was dancing at my friend’s wedding, would sneak handfuls of chocolate truffles off the dessert table and hide them in my purse to eat alone later in my hotel room.

I was now someone who almost missed a morning flight because I just had to get a 5:00 a.m. run in before leaving for the airport.

I was now a hyper-vigilant dieter who spent more time tracking my calories, miles and weight than I did connecting with others, laughing and enjoying life.

I was so ensnared in diet culture and so desperate to conform to the thin ideal that I was oblivious to how dieting was damaging my physical, mental, emotional and social health.

Stopped Me from Going Back
Although I am appalled by and ashamed of my behavior, I feel compassion and sorrow for my younger self who bought into our culture’s very convincing, toxic narrative that thinness would bring me health and happiness and that the size of my body determined my value and worth.

I also feel gratitude for finally being able to see so clearly how my dieting and anti-fat bias were harming myself and others.

My cringe-worthy behavior ended up playing a key role in helping me escape diet culture, recover from chronic dieting, uproot my anti-fat bias, and heal my relationship with food, movement and my body.

Whenever I was tempted to start dieting again, I reflected on the person dieting turned me into and the incredible damage it did. 

Knowing that I never wanted to return to that person and place again motivated me to stay on my healing path.

I Inhaled the Snack Mix. My Eating Felt Out of Control.

A few days ago, I arrived home early in the evening feeling absolutely ravenous. 

Due to an unexpected delay that afternoon, I wasn't able to eat lunch and my body was screaming for food.

I spotted a container of snack mix my mom and I had recently made on the kitchen counter and thought I’d eat a few handfuls to tide me over until dinner was ready.

Well, one handful quickly turned into multiple handfuls. 

I could not stop eating it. 

In fact, I was shoveling it into my mouth.

My eating felt frenzied, primal, animalistic. 

It felt out of control in a way it hadn’t in a very long time.

Unable to focus on preparing dinner or anything else, like unpacking my bags or changing into my comfy clothes, I hovered over the container as if I was tethered to it and ate as if I would never have access to food again.

Out of Control
In my dieting days, episodes like this happened frequently and I’d chastise myself for being out of control with my eating. 

My diet mentality would have convinced me that I lacked willpower and discipline, that I couldn’t be trusted to have snack mix in the house, that I should just throw the rest away and never make it again.

My internal Food Police would have berated me, telling me how bad I was for eating so much snack mix and that I needed to make up for it by skipping dinner and working out longer the next morning.

Thankfully, this isn’t what happened.

In Survival Mode
I compassionately understood in that moment that I was inhaling the snack mix because my body was trying to get its nourishment needs met.

My ravenous hunger had put me in survival mode. 

In an attempt to keep me alive, my very wise brain was telling me I needed to eat as much as possible as fast as possible. 

Although it felt like it, I wasn’t acting out of control. I was experiencing a natural human response to extreme hunger.

Since I stopped intentionally restricting my food years ago, I rarely get to the point of ravenous hunger these days thus rarely find myself in situations like these. 

Usually, I plan ahead to ensure my body is fully nourished on a regular basis. But sometimes life gets in the way and I’m unable to eat when I need to.

Although it would’ve been more enjoyable to savor the snack mix at a leisurely pace, I’m grateful it was there to quickly satisfy my body’s needs. 

I'm also grateful I was able to just eat it and move on without feeling any guilt, shame, remorse or other unhelpful thoughts and feelings. To me, this is true food freedom.