Overeating is not your fault, But it is your problem.
🍔 Why We Overeat
It’s a common belief that overeating is a simple matter of willpower or lack of discipline. The truth is far more complex. The food we’re surrounded by has been meticulously engineered to hijack our brains, manipulate our hormones, and encourage us to eat far more than we need. Overeating isn’t a moral failing; it’s a physiological response to a food environment designed for overconsumption.
These engineered foods are made with a perfect combination of sugar, salt, fat, and texture to overstimulate your dopamine pathways and override your body’s natural satiety signals. Research has shown that these foods can effectively blunt the hormones that tell your brain you’ve had enough. A 2019 study published in Cell Metabolism by Hall et al. found that subjects consumed significantly more of a highly processed diet than an unprocessed one. This isn’t a coincidence—it’s a deliberate design choice by large food companies.
⚠️ How Processed Food Tricks Your Body
These engineered foods trick your body with a potent mix of ingredients and textures:
- High sugar and refined carbohydrates cause rapid insulin spikes, leading to blood sugar crashes that trigger intense hunger.
- Industrial seed oils and trans fats disrupt the delicate hormonal signalling of leptin and ghrelin, which are responsible for telling you when you’re full or hungry.
- Ultra-processed textures and flavours create what’s known as “hyperpalatability,” which encourages you to continue eating long after your body is satisfied.
- Artificial additives and flavour enhancers directly hijack your brain’s reward pathways, compelling you to seek out more dopamine hits, which leads to powerful cravings.
The synergy of these well-studied elements tricks your body into thinking it needs more calories than it actually does. By understanding this, you can move beyond self-blame and take a more strategic, science-backed approach to your health.
📽️ Watch Steve’s Youtube Short: THIS is why YOU eat more #bigfood
🛡️ Protecting Yourself: Reclaiming Your Appetite
You don’t have to completely isolate yourself from modern food, but knowledge is your most powerful tool. By making small, mindful adjustments, you can begin to retrain your appetite and protect your body from engineered overeating cues.
Start by:
- Choosing whole, minimally processed foods as the foundation of your diet.
- Reading food labels to identify and avoid hidden sugars, industrial oils, and harmful additives.
- Building your meals around protein, fibre, and healthy fats, which are all essential for promoting long-lasting feelings of fullness.
- Limiting ultra-processed snacks that are designed to hit multiple reward pathways at once.
💡 Takeaway:
No, not takeaways! But today’s takeway.
Overeating isn’t about personal failure—it’s about being smart in a world engineered to make you eat more. When you understand the neurological and hormonal nudges built into our modern food system, you can take strategic, science-backed steps to reclaim control over your appetite, health, and energy. It’s an empowering shift from a mindset of guilt to one of informed action.
What’s one small change you can make this week to take control of your diet?
Want to truly explore your hunger? I have two powerful episodes in the Made To Thrive podcast archives 🎙️ about food, food addiction and sugar addiction.
Sugar Addicts, Big Food’s Annuity Income Plan, & How To Break Free from Sugar’s Enslavement.
Are We All Addicted? Sugar, Ultra-Processed & Big Food’s Plan To Keep You Enslaved – Dr Joan Ifland
