Emotional Eating

My name is Patrick McGilvray, and I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, sports nutritionist, Master life coach and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve dedicated my life to helping runners just like you, properly fuel your body and your mind so you can get leaner, get stronger, run faster and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.

Hey there, and welcome to episode 248 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners, and today, How Do I Know If I’m Overeating? So if you want to lose weight and you’re finding it difficult, maybe you’ve hit a plateau and you can’t seem to get the weight moving again, then this episode is especially for you. Losing weight is never a linear process. There’s always going to be ups and downs and even stalls in your weight loss journey, and all of this is perfectly normal, but if you’re really struggling to get the weight moving in the right direction again, you might want to consider whether or not you are eating too much.

So in this episode, I’m going to answer that question, how do I know if I’m overeating, and offer some practical tips to help you stop overeating, if you are and if you’re somebody who’s struggling with losing weight, you’re a runner. You’re training for a 5k or a 10k or a half marathon or a marathon or ultra marathon, or maybe you’re just someone who loves running, and you don’t have any races scheduled or anything like that, perfectly fine. You would probably benefit from some coaching. Overeating, losing weight, running, all of these things can be complicated.

When we start thinking about them, we start breaking them all down, and today, I’m going to be going over a lot about what overeating looks like and how we can overcome that, but some people just need a little bit more help. They need a little bit more hand holding through this process. They need a little bit more guidance, a little more direction, a little more accountability. And if that sounds like you, then you might be somebody who could benefit from coaching. Coaching is just having somebody who’s got your back, who’s there to help you, to guide you through this process, who’s done it all before, who’s made the mistakes, who can help you not make mistakes, and who can help you to get to your weight loss goals faster and easier than you can do on your own. I know this because I struggled for years trying to lose weight and learn how to eat properly. And once I got a coach, it really changed everything for me. It was the game changer for me. It might be the game changer for you, too. And if you want to learn more, you can go to my website, runningleancoach.com, click on work with me. You and I have a conversation. We can talk about coaching. We’ll see if this is a good fit for you, but I want to be there to help you to become that best version of yourself. So if you’re ready to become that most badass version of yourself, then maybe consider coaching. You can’t hurt to have that conversation with me. It’s completely free. It’s runningleancoaching.com and then click on work with me. Cool.

Okay, so today we’re going to be talking about, how do I know if I’m overeating, and a few episodes back, don’t have my notes in front of me, but I talked about, you know, why calorie counting doesn’t work and and we talked pretty extensively about that, and that would be a good one to kind of dovetail into this episode, because in this episode, I really want to talk about what it means to be somebody that overeats. And the reason I want to talk about this is because I have always been a chronic overeater, and I don’t know where or when this started for me. I have a feeling it’s because I grew up in a family of five kids. You know, there was two parents, so there were seven of us at the dinner table every night. And you know, my mom made, my mom was an amazing cook, by the way, she was, she just showed love by cooking and so I grew up eating amazing food, but there was only so much to go around, you know, and you had to fight for your portion.

And then after I got a little bit older, and I started living on my own and stuff, I realized that I didn’t have to fight anybody for food, and I could just eat as much as I want. And I think there was something implanted in me at a very early age that was this, like, scarcity mindset or something around food. It doesn’t really matter. I’m just saying that. I don’t really know where this comes from, and it’s a little bit different for each person. We all get different cues as we’re growing up.

We get different messages implanted in us, from parents, from authority figures, from siblings, whatever. And some of us really struggle with eating too much or chronically overeating. And that was definitely me. I was definitely somebody who had to eat a lot. And to this day, I can still eat a lot, and one of the reasons why trying to control the amount of calories I was eating didn’t work for me is because I felt like when I was counting calories and tracking on my food and app and stuff like that, I felt like I was starving all the time. I was miserable because I was hungry all the time. I wasn’t eating to that uncomfortable fullness that I got accustomed to. And if this sounds like you, if you’re accustomed to eating to a place where you feel a little uncomfortable, you’re like, oh yeah, I’m full. I really can’t eat anymore. That’s probably a sign that you might be eating too much. You just might be overeating.

Okay, so going back to this traditional thinking that in order to lose weight, you have to count your calories, and you have to be in a calorie deficit, I don’t think that is really necessary. I don’t think it’s required to count calories, measure your food, track all your food in an app. I think we can be very intuitive about how much food we’re eating, and that’s a big part of what I want to talk about today is, how do we get in touch with those natural signals that our body tells us when we’re eating the right amount, but not beyond that.

So we don’t want to be in a calorie deficit all the time. We don’t want to be in a calorie surplus all the time. And there are different things that affect us, from a hunger standpoint, especially, and a fullness standpoint. And there’s really two parts to what I’m talking about today. There’s a physical aspect of what I’m going to be calling overeating, and then there’s a physical, I’m sorry, there’s a mental or emotional aspect of overeating. So the physical aspect of overeating a lot of times, the physical overeating is caused by the types of foods that you are consuming and when you are eating the right kinds of food, your body operates much differently than when you’re eating, for example, highly processed, hyper palatable, ultra processed, high sugar laden foods, those kinds of foods mess with your system.

Hyper palatable foods mean foods that have been engineered to be extremely desirable, addictive, even I will go as far as to say that those kinds of foods mess up your hunger signals. They make you feel much more hungry than you actually are, so they increase the production of ghrelin, the hunger hormone, and you end up feeling hungry all the time. And even though you’re eating more ultra processed foods, you just can’t seem to get enough, because it’s so amazing. They’re so good, they’re so addictive. And you just, the more you eat of that stuff, the more you crave that stuff, and the more you eat, the more you eat. Bad cycle to be in.

So the ultra processed foods, the hyper palatable foods, will definitely mess up your hunger signals. They’re going to make you more hungry. You’re naturally going to eat more food when you are eating ultra processed, hyper palatable foods. The other hormone that gets affected profoundly by these types of foods is leptin. Leptin is the fullness sensor, the fullness hormone. So when you eat some food, let’s say you eat a bunch of chicken. You can only eat so much chicken and your and leptin is going to go, guess what? You’re done eating, and you stop eating because you’re like, I cannot eat anymore of this chicken as an experiment. Try this sometime. Just sit down to eat some chicken breasts. See if you can eat, like, a pound of chicken breasts. I’m going to tell you right now, it’s going to be very difficult to do, because I’ve tried it and I can’t do it, it’s very hard to do, but if you put three pounds of pasta in front of me, heck yeah, I can eat that and all the bread that goes with it.

So eating ultra processed, hyper palatable foods will not only increase ghrelin production and make you more hungry, it suppresses leptin production so you don’t feel full when you’re eating these foods. So this is a bad combination, right? So these, these two things alone, are enough to make you pause, I hope anyway, and think about the types of foods that you’re eating. How they affect you. So again, we’re not just talking about calories. It isn’t about the number of calories. It’s about the types of foods that you’re eating, which affect you profoundly. So those ultra processed foods, those hyper palatable foods, are a big problem, and they really cause you to overeat.

One of the biggest physical causes of eating too much food, overeating is eating the wrong types of foods. And something I just heard today, which is very fascinating, is that ultra processed foods, these things are not good for you, and I think we all understand that, but each additional serving of ultra processed foods increases early mortality by 18%. 18% more likely to die early with each additional serving of ultra processed foods, this is crazy. The crazier part, though, is that 67% of the foods that kids are eating today are considered Ultra processed foods. 67% of the foods that our kids are eating today are considered Ultra processed foods. This is crazy.

One more quick little stat I’m going to share with you is that 82% of independently funded studies. So when they do Food Studies, these are, like independent researchers doing these studies, 82% of these independently funded studies show that ultra processed foods are harmful to us, while 93% of studies that are funded by the food industry show that ultra processed foods are not harmful for us. This is a big red flag right there. So if you’re, if you’re looking to, you know, the big food companies to help you make a decision about what kinds of foods you’re eating, probably a bad idea. Just going to throw that out there. Much better to just stick with eating real food, food that still looks like food. Shop the perimeter of the grocery store, stay away from all the packaged, processed, hyper palatable foods, that kind of stuff.

Okay, so going back to the physical aspect of overeating. So another thing to consider is that a lot of us, and I’m including myself in this. A lot of us have trained ourselves, over decades of eating to that uncomfortable state. You know, you eat and then you’re full, but then you eat a little bit more, and then you’re, like, really full, like that, that uncomfortable state. Years of training yourself to do this means that when you sit down and you eat a normal food, a normal amount of food, you have to keep eating until you get to that uncomfortable state, because that’s what you’re used to. That’s what feels good for you.

And there are some chemicals that get produced when we eat like that, and we get to that, you know, have you heard the term like, food coma? Yeah, it’s like, you get into that food coma, where you’re like, oh, I just can’t eat anymore, but it feels kind of good. You know, there’s like, dopamine, and there’s different chemicals, neurotransmitters that are being released in your brain that actually make you feel good when you overeat, like that. And if you’re used to that feeling when you eat, that’s what you’re going for.

It’s kind of like the person that drinks to get drunk, you know, they drink because they want the feeling of getting super buzzed, you know, whereas some people can have a half a glass of wine and they’re fine. So if you’re one of these people that has trained yourself over decades to eat until you feel uncomfortable, then that might be something you’re going to have to undo, because you just learn. It’s a learned behavior. You’ve learned it over decades. You can unlearn that. We’ll talk a little bit more about that in a second.

A comedian that I love, Jim Gaffigan said once, he said, I have a problem with overeating. He said, I don’t stop eating when I’m full. I stop eating when I hate myself, and it’s kind of funny. It’s kind of sad in a way, but it’s said in jest, obviously, but I think it’s, it’s very telling of how we treat ourselves, when we eat food, how we want to get to this place where we feel miserable, but that’s like the goal for a lot of people. And so for me, I always wanted to get to this place where I felt slightly uncomfortable, and then I’m like, uh, okay, yeah, I think I’m done now, you know, so that is something that we need to address. We need to address the overeating issue.

So how do we do this? How do we just stop if I just tell you to stop overeating. Just stop eating too much food. You’re gonna be like, dude, that it’s hard to do right? One little philosophy that I love is this Japanese philosophy called Hara Hachi Bu and I may be mispronouncing that, but what it means is stop eating when you’re 80% full is a very simple concept, and there’s a lot of very healthy Japanese people. They consider this one of the Blue Zones, I guess. I don’t know, but, you know, people in Japan are generally pretty, pretty fit. They don’t have the kind of obesity numbers that we have here in the United States and other Western you know, considered like Western cultures. So if you can start to be more mindful about what you’re eating and how much you’re eating, and stop when you feel about 80% full, this can go a long way to help you to not get into that overeating place.

Now, one thing that’s going to be challenging is that you’re used to eating until you’re uncomfortable. You’re used to eating until you get to that food coma state, or whatever it is for you, and that’s going to be difficult. And this is where we start to get into the mental and emotional side of overeating. So we’ve talked about the physical side. You know, the types of foods you’re eating. You know why you eat too much, why you tend to overeat. There’s pleasure involved with that. There’s also the mental and emotional side of this. So you’ve kind of trained yourself that you want to feel a certain way. You know you want to, you want to get to this mental and emotional state where you feel satiated, you know, where you feel like, probably overly satiated. I’ll say it that way, because just feeling satiated is a good thing. That’s like that 80% so that’s like feeling satiated when you go beyond that, that’s when we start getting into overeating. And remember, this is all of the stuff I’m talking about is just for you to start thinking about. I want you to be just thinking about this stuff.

If you’re somebody who’s trying to lose weight and you’ve hit some kind of stall, you’ve hit some sort of plateau, the weight loss is not moving for you. You’re doing all the right things, you’re eating all the right foods, you’re exercising, you’re lifting weights, you’re feeling you’re doing all the good things, but it’s just the weight is just not moving for you. Consider whether or not you are overeating, and look at the types of foods you’re eating, look at how much you’re eating, look at, you know, eating to a place where you feel naturally good, and when you feel naturally good, that’s a good time to stop like that’s when we feel satiated. We don’t want to go beyond that, and that could be about 80% or so.

So then we’ve got the mental, emotional side, and that’s where you know we are eating because we’re bored or stressed or angry or nervous, or whatever, fill in the blank, whatever that emotion is that is causing you to go eat mindlessly. So this is a lot of snacking. Snacking is just one of those things that you don’t need to be snacking. We’re snacking because we’re bored, we’re snacking because we’re lonely, we’re snacking because we’re stressed out. I can’t tell you how many people I talk to are like, I don’t really need food, like I’m just I’m not even hungry, but I need that bowl of chips or, you know, M&M’s, or pretzels or something at my desk all day while I’m working, just so I have something to munch on. That is what I would call emotional eating, because you’re eating not because of hunger, not because your body needs fuel, you’re eating because you’re bored or you’re nervous, you know, or you’ve got some anxiety or something like that, whatever that emotion is for you.

Also, we just train ourselves to do this that we have to be eating constantly. So one thing that you want to be mindful of is, what am I eating? Why am I eating this? You know, not just what am I eating, but why am I eating in this moment, you can ask yourself those questions like, what do I really need this right now? Or am I just like, bored or stressed out? Or is this just a habit?

Because those automatic eating behaviors really need to stop. If you want to lose weight, then you need to really start getting in touch with what your body actually needs. What does that nutrition look like for your body? What does my body need in this moment, and stop the mindless, automatic eating behaviors. Once you do that, I guarantee you the weight will start moving again. Most diets do not ever address this, though, but if you want to lose weight, you’re going to have to address the mental and emotional sides of eating.

And we all do this. There’s nothing wrong with you if you do this, if you know, I do some emotional eating sometimes, we all do at times. Now I have learned that. That I don’t snack anymore. I’m not just walking around. I don’t have snack food in my house anymore, you know, I just don’t have anything here that is going to be something that I need to, like, munch on. I do have some. I keep some salami and some cheese in the fridge. And occasionally, while I’m making dinner, if I’m exceptionally hungry in that moment, I’ll slice off a little bit salami, some cheese or something like that, and eat that as sort of like an appetizer while I’m, you know, cooking dinner.

But for the most part, yeah, I don’t, I don’t do snacks, and I’ve just trained myself that I can be uncomfortable and I don’t have to eat because of it. You know, I could just be uncomfortable. Sometimes I get bored, sometimes I get stressed out and I’ll just be bored and I just be stressed out. It’s okay to feel that way.

One thing that’s important though, I want to just talk about how we evolved as human beings over 10s of 1000s, hundreds of 1000s of years, and we never counted calories. And you know, we lived beautiful lives. We ate because we needed the nutrition for our body. We ate because, you know, we wanted to survive. We needed to not die. So we needed food to eat in order to not die. It was a survival thing for us as human beings. For hundreds of 1000s of years, and now we eat because we just want to feel good. We eat Ultra processed foods, hyper palatable foods, because it feels good to do so, and then we eat all the time. So why don’t we just sort of start sliding back into our caveman roots, if you will, and start eating because our body needs the nutrition and we don’t want to die.

So the bottom line here today, if you’ve hit some sort of a stall or some sort of a plateau in your weight loss journey, you’re doing all the right things, you’re eating the right foods, but you’re not losing weight like just consider that you might be overeating. You don’t need to count calories, you don’t need to weigh all your food. You don’t need to enter everything into an app. But just start being more mindful about how much you’re eating.

Try that Hara Hachi Bu method of just eating until you’re about 80% full, and see how that feels for you. You want to get to this place where you’re eating more intuitively. You’re naturally eating the right amount of food for you, not too much, not too little, just the right amount you want to eat until you feel about 80% full, satiated. Not until you’re uncomfortable, not until you hate yourself, just until you’re satiated. Okay?

And then look into that emotional eating side of things too. Because I think a lot of people who set out to lose weight, they address the types of foods they’re eating or the calories, but they’re not looking into that emotional side of things. And that’s a very, very important part of all of this. And just a lot of diets out there, a lot of programs do not address this at all. So it’s something you really have to address if you want to lose weight.

And just notice, like, when you’re about to eat something, ask yourself, Why am I choosing this right now? Like, do I really need this, or am I just stressed or bored, or whatever? And remember, as human beings, we’ve managed all of this beautifully. We did really well listening to our bodies and being in tune with our body’s natural hunger and fullness signals. What, when do we need to eat? When should we not be eating?

We did this beautifully for hundreds of 1000s of years. We can do it again. You can do it again. You got this.

Okay, that’s all I got for you today. Love you all. Keep on Running Lean. I will talk to you soon.