Here’s a trick question for you…Why do we overeat? Is it sugar addiction? No willpower? There isn’t an oversized person out there who wouldn’t simply say that they just can’t help it. Sounds defeatist, but in a way they’re right. The holier than thou BODY encourages us to overeat to avoid starvation. But here’s the catch…the body wouldn’t encourage us to overeat if we didn’t frequently undereat!
One to two days a week when our schedules become more important than our meals, we accidently set off the body’s trigger to overeat. This loss of calories with undereating causes the body to shut down its appetite control function until the body can consume and recover the calories it was deprived of. It’s the same with sleep. If we don’t get enough sleep, the body tries to get us to ‘over sleep’ or have an ‘extra’ sleep within a couple of days. The difference between sleep deprivation and calorie deprivation, however, is that where we can store unlimited calories, we can’t store sleep.
Consequently, when the body occasionally needs calories, it doesn’t use stored body fat; it just uses the extra fuel that is available on the liver. When the body overeats, it puts the fuel back onto the liver and then stores some as body fat just in case. Two steps forward, one step back is the consequential pattern when the body is yo-yoing between undereating and overeating.
We curse ourselves for succumbing to cravings but we never try to stop the true cause for overeating. Use the Balance Factor App to see if you are eating enough calories daily. If you are, the urge to overeat will no longer be an issue. Staying in the green zones on the Calorie and the Balance Factor Graphs is the easiest way to stop the yo-yoing and prevent the body from encouraging you to overeat. Download the Balance Factor App today and we’ll guide you to getting your appetite under control.
