Bites & Body Love (v)

Psychology of Overeating- Backlash of Ignoring Hunger

• Jamie Magdic

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Think skipping meals or avoiding “off-limits” foods keeps you in control? Think again. Ignoring your body’s hunger triggers primal urges, cravings, and binge–restrict cycles — and it’s not a lack of willpower. In this episode, we break down the biology and psychology behind overeating, from the “what the hell” effect to the forbidden-fruit phenomenon, and show why honoring your hunger is actually the path to true food freedom. 

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SPEAKER_00:

So you may think that skipping meals, restricting certain foods, or being good with food is gonna is what's gonna get you in control of your eating. But the reality is it's far more complicated and it's far more out of your control than that. It's not just about willpower. There's actual things happening in your body that you can't resist. So distrusting and ignoring your body's natural signals around hunger almost always backfires, if not always. And it's going to lead to cycles of overeating, binging, guilt, and feeling out of control. And understanding why this happens is the first step toward truly trusting your body. So let's break it down. Let's break down all of the different cycles and reasons why ignoring your hunger cues will lead to the opposite of what you're looking for. So, number one, the first thing I want to talk about is it's going to lead to primal hunger, your body's SOS, something you can, again, not willpower your way through. So primal hunger is that urgent, almost desperate need to eat. So that's going to be accompanied with uh hanger, anxiety, a feeling of being out of control. And it really drives us straight to high fat, high sugar, energy dense foods, and that makes sense. So, why does that primal hunger happen? When you ignore those cues, it's like holding your breath underwater. You are, your body doesn't have the oxygen. And so when it comes up for air, it's going to try and get all the air it can. And so that's what's happening with food. When you are restricting, you're going to get that primal desire to eat, urging you to eat as much energy-rich food as possible, as quickly as possible, and as much as possible. And this isn't just physical, it's also psychological, too. The longer you ignore your primal hunger, the more likely you are to feel the psychological consequences, which is feeling those compensatory urges that aren't going to feel good in your body. You're going to enter that famous binge restrict cycle, right? That we know so well. You're going to treat meals like they're your last eating in the kind of all bets off mentality. You're going to continue to lose that interceptive awareness and your ability to read your own body's cues and trust your own body's cues. So, in short, ignoring hunger teaches your brain to distrust your body. You start questioning whether your natural drive to fuel yourself is valid, which is going to lead to disconnection and a lot of guilt around food. So primal hunger, number one, there's nothing we can do about it that is going to drive you to eat and it's, you know, it's trying to protect you. So the next thing, number two, the deprivation effect and why no doesn't work. Simply just saying no and depriving yourself. So dieting doesn't just restrict food, it hijacks your brain. When we take a food off the table, shame ourselves for wanting that food, or mentally restricting by shaming ourselves while eating it, we trigger these obsessive thoughts about food, uh, low energy, heightened anxiety, and again, a disconnect from our own bodies. But the irony is that our minds think we're controlling eating, but this kind of deprivation is actually going to fuel it. It's going to keep food at the center of our thoughts instead of letting it be a neutral, nourishing experience. So we charge foods up by simply just saying no. We cannot keep up with that. It's just we're we're charging it up, we're making it this food that we have set off limits. And when you think of a kid in a candy store who never gets candy, they're going to want the candy. Versus a kid who gets candy in their life, it's more neutral. It's not shamed. When they go in the candy store, they might be like, hmm, I'll just pick this, you know, versus the person, the kid who never has candy is going to want everything in the store, eat it all at once, um, knowing they're never going to get it again. So simply just saying no, that deprivation effect effect um is just will not work. And again, these are all backed by research. So these ones I'm naming are all backed by research, and uh you can put your own experiences in it to it too, but very proven. So, number three, the third proven result of ignoring hunger is what's gonna happen is you're gonna have that dietary restraint or what the hell effect. So when you restrict or you diet, you're gonna set yourself up for a cycle called the restraint overeating cycle. And how this plays out is you set a rule. Um, I can't eat chocolate. And if you break that rule, even slightly, your brain triggers the what the hell effect and the all bets are off mentality that's gonna lead to binging. You know what I'm talking about, that chocolate that you're just like, I might, I had one bite, I might as well have the whole bar, or I had one donut, I might as well eat the rest of the donuts because I'm never gonna allow myself uh this again. Um, this is the last time I'm gonna have it. So even the perception of overeating can trigger that response, by the way. Researchers found that dieters overeat simply when they believe they're consuming high calorie foods, even if they aren't. One study done here, and what they they they found is when they told people to two dieting groups that they were eating something with a lower amount of calories, and they told the other group that they were eating a higher amount of calories, the people who believe they were eating a higher amount of calories and thought they were being bad ended up eating more than the other group. Um, so see how that your mind messes with you in that way. Um so it's it's really not about weakness. It's really not about willpower, it's about how your brain reacts to restriction, guilt, and the pressure to be perfect. So as you can see, this is not just physical, it's not just it's also psychological, um, and it's really out of our control. This happens to everyone because it is literally the way we're wired to um survive and to thrive. So, number four, the fourth one I want to talk about is the anticipation of food restriction effect. So, again, when we're not on our hunger, this is gonna happen. So, restrictive dieting doesn't just affect um eating in the moment, it's gonna shape your behavior in advance. So, for example, studies show that people who are told to avoid chocolate for three weeks end up consuming more chocolate both before and after the restriction period. Why? Because anticipation of restriction is gonna fuel overconsumption because you you think you're never gonna get it again. Restrained eaters often end up eating no less than non-restrained eating, but they also experience more guilt, shame, and preoccupation with food. Number five, the thought suppression and the forbidden fruit phenomenon phenomenon. So when you ignore hunger, this is what happens. So I'm gonna tell you don't think about chocolate. How often are we gonna fail at that? I just told you not to think about chocolate. You're gonna think about chocolate. Research proves that trying to suppress that food-related thought is only gonna make that specific thought stronger, which is going to increase the likelihood of eating it. You're putting a spotlight on it, you're charging it up. Um, so similarly, this forbidden fruit phenomenon is um classic psychology. Give children a food that they aren't allowed to have, um, like yellow MMs, and they eat more of that food than anything else. So both biological and psychological deprivation is gonna fuel obsessive thoughts and disconnect from disconnect you from your body cues. So, what's the takeaway with these five different um phenomenons and and um research-backed um behaviors from ignoring hunger and restriction. When we ignore hunger, when we restrict ourselves, when we shame ourselves around food, we're fighting against our body's natural intelligence and create these shame cycles. Hunger is a signal, uh, it's not a weakness. And restriction and shaming is a setup for overeating, binging, and the endless cycle of guilt. So understanding that these mechanisms are out of your control and natural is the first step to kind of accepting that and breaking free and understanding we don't have control over that and going toward what actually works. Um, but knowing is only part of the work. Learning how to reconnect with your body, trust all its cues, normalize all foods. It's gonna take guidance, support, and practice and getting uncomfortable by doing things different. And you absolutely can get to a place where you can rebuild trust with food and rebuild trust with your body and stop restricting and stop binging and stop ignoring hunger cues, which all leads to these inevitable effects of wanting that food more, it feeling charged up. All of those five things that we talked about. And this is what I see with my clients time and time again. They fall into, if not all of these cycles, um many of them. And again, this is research back. This is um not just your experience. This is the drive, both physically and psychologically, that your body is going to take naturally because it's not a willpower problem. It is not something we can just white knuckle, um, it is not something we can, you know, beat. Uh, you're inevitably gonna fall into these places. So the only way to get out of that is to start listening to your cues, learning your cues, not ignoring your hunger signals, feeding yourself consistently, not shaming your body, really being able to trust all foods and eat from a place of trust, respect, and compassion, which takes building backup trust with food in your body. So I hope this was helpful. If you have any questions, let me know. Um, I love chatting about these specifically and and really bringing in the research because it's it's hard to argue. But I also want to leave you with you know, this research is really helpful. But ask yourself, what happens? What happens when you ignore hunger? Does it ever actually work? And if you say yes, it works, for how long until it doesn't work? Because something that works should last and work all the time, right? And in addition, if it if it's working for you for a long time, what negative impacts might it be bringing into your life? That having to consistently ignore hunger and being successful at that, what does that actually do do to you physically and mentally? Um, bring in your own experience, ask yourself, is this what I really want? Is there is this another is there another way? Um, because I can tell you there absolutely is another way that allows you to feel in control. Being able to, you can listen to your hunger cues, you can listen to your cues, you can trust all of them, you can truly trust your body, you can be friends with your body, you can practice respect and feel just truly free of all the food noise. And um, you really deserve it.