overeat and feel guilty.

claregib wrote: »

How do you cope when you when over eaten eaten your calories in day? I've eaten twice my calories in one day and feel terribly guilty, please help I was so hungry and craving the things I'd eaten

I feel guilty too but then try to start over the next day. You can't go back in time.

I used to feel that way, but happily I no longer do. I think it's because I see this as a "rest of my life" process now. One bad day or even a bad week doesn't matter. Statistically irrelevant.

Don't feel guilty. It has nothing to do with your character or willpower. Hunger is driven by your body's complex hormonal system, and hormones always override willpower and conscious thought. Years ago, I used to count calories, exercise, and starve to lose a few pounds, only to get ravenous and eat all the calories back. Now I've learned that the types of foods one eats affects the body in ways that drive either hunger or satiety--picking the right foods matters so much more than counting the right number of calories.

Calories are used by the body in many different ways. Protein, for example, is often used to build tissues or enzymes for chemical reactions. Take sugar or glucose, for example, your body actually keeps very little glucose on hand. A total of about 4g in your blood, 100g in the muscles, and another 400g in the liver. Glucose is water soluble, and when the level rises in your bloodstream, it can be bind to proteins and damage cells, your body doesn't want high blood sugar--lots of complications from that! So it sounds the alarm, secretes insulin, and immediately stores it as fat. Overconsume sugar and simple carbohydrates (very easy to do) and those calories go straight to fat cells, only to be released later, broken down back down into energy by the liver, if you have a period of fasting where you actually burn through enough of your glucose stores to need it. Fat, on the other hand is not water soluble. The liver packages it in little protein-coated blobs called chylomicrons. These little guys are not inflammatory and can float around in your bloodstream for hours and hours and be used by tissues for fuel (especially in the presence of low insulin, meaning you ate a high fat low carb meal, since it is not being driven into storage as well)--so you have long-lasting energy and less hunger overall.

When it comes to hunger, the biggest hormonal player is insulin. Keep insulin low, and you will keep hunger low. Additionally, pay close attention to micro-nutrient density. The more nutritious the foods you choose, the less hunger you will experience. Whole, real foods are far more nutrient-dense than processed, refined foods that have been so altered from their natural state that they are beyond recognition.

Taking all this into consideration, I now eat a real food low carb high fat diet. I don't experience ravenous hunger like I used to. In fact, I can comfortably fast for extended periods of time. Often I eat only once per day, sometimes I have gone 3 days without much effort on my part. Believe me, I used to think that I lacked will-power as well when I used to struggle calorie counting and eating standard, high-carbohydrate, nutrient poor foods.

If you are interested in this way of eating, check out www.dietdoctor.com

When I say "way of eating," the reality is that this is THE human, species-appropriate diet. It is not magic. It is how we've eaten for millennia. Cows, for example, don't count calories when they eat grass, and they stay lean. However, if you put them on a species-inappropriate diet of corn, and they will gain fat and develop heart disease. Farmers know this. In France, they have an old traditional method of force-feeding ducks corn in order to instigate fatty liver disease to create the delicacy of foie gras. The liver swells to 10 times its normal size. The same thing happens in humans with a species-inappropriate diet. In humans, fatty liver, insulin resistance (pre-diabetes), and obesity go hand in hand. In the US now, non alcoholic fatty liver is a growing epidemic and the #1 cause of liver failure. The cause is our chronic, species-inappropriate high carbohydrate, industrialized, nutrient-poor diets.

claregib wrote: »

How do you cope when you when over eaten eaten your calories in day? I've eaten twice my calories in one day and feel terribly guilty, please help I was so hungry and craving the things I'd eaten

Feeling guilty accomplishes nothing. Instead, take the opportunity to understand what happened and take steps to prevent it from happening in the future if -- and it's a big if -- you think it was a bad thing and aren't just reacting to reflexive guilt.

If you were "so hungry" -- why? Are you undereating? Have you been too restrictive? Are you not using your calories wisely?

If you were craving what you ate, could you have fit them into your calories (or done so over multiple days?) or saved up calories for them? Could you have satisfied the craving with fewer calories? Was it a rare thing that you enjoyed?

Also, why feel guilty? Guilt should be about doing something wrong. You made a choice to eat and that's not necessarily a good decision or the best thing for you (but it also might be, it all depends). However, it's certainly not morally wrong. Guilt is not the right reaction to this kind of thing and could be a bad sign (although it's also common enough in our society that I wouldn't assume it is -- but think about it).

ahoy_m8 wrote: »

IMHO, there is a difference between hunger and craving. You mention both. I think of hunger as something physical that results from too little food. Not a national emergency by any means, just a signal that it's time to eat or that my daily totals are averaging too low.

Craving is a mental thing that can be completely detached from hunger. Weirdly, I most often have a craving at the end of a meal, when I'm least likely to be hungry. But hunger & craving are connected -- eating too low is a cravings trigger for me.

tl:dr -- check your calorie goal and make sure it is appropriate (deficit not too big) to address both hunger & cravings. Good luck!

Agree there is a difference between hunger and craving. The former is driven primarily by insulin, the latter by dopamine--which involves the reward pathways in the brain. Hyper-palatable foods, especially sweet foods, cause a dopamine release. Over time and repeated exposure, the receptors down-regulate and require more and more dopamine to get the same reward. The only cure for that kind of craving is complete abstinence and time for the brain to heal and regain sensitivity--as with any addictive substance.

Reward pathways were made for reason. We should enjoy our foods. Pleasure and good taste were historically linked to quality, freshness, ripeness, and nutrient-density. Processed foods and man-made flavors have changed that and hijacked our natural reward systems. Your best bet is to stay away from these engineered food products and stick to natural rewards from real food!

Mistakes are made to be learned from. Figure out what you overeat on, what made you overeat and improve on it