Mental Health and Me

Chapter 7: Overeating and Diet

This chapter is about overeating, especially when we feel stressed or feeling down, we sometimes often to over-eating as a way to feel better about ourselves. But doing this on a regular basis can lead to long-term health problems and also lead you to having a more unbalanced diet and gain weight. From my experience whenever I've felt so stressed or down I'd go downstairs and get some chocolate and some biscuits and this led to me gaining weight, sometimes we just can't help it but there are other ways to deal with these situations instead of overeating.

In 2017 30% of children aged 2-15 were obese and this may be linked to overeating and other factors. Overeating is a major cause of obesity and this could lead to higher risks for coronary heart diseases etc. which is a long-term risk on your health.

Overeating can be caused by many factors, but we especially overeat sometimes due to other mental health problems like anxiety and stress. It's so easy to go downstairs eat a lot of chocolate and sweets and it makes us feel slightly better, yes in the short-term it will calm you a little but eating these foods can make you feel worse and doesn't actually help the problem at all. The first thing to combat this is not combatting overeating but to firstly combat the problem, there's a reason you feel the need to overeat and tackling the first might actually solve your overeating problems. So let's take an example and often my experience was stress and anxiety that led to eating problems, in previous chapters we look at stress and anxiety in more detail and my advice is to look at these problems and think about how we can overcome this situation instead of just eating.

Instead of eating there is many other things that allow us to get away from these negative thoughts in our heads that makes us want to overeat. The first thing Is to do some exercise, go for a run or a walk this brings positive emotions and helps to clear your head and helps to reduce the want to eat. Exercising is a perfect way to help with many mental health problems and can improve your mindset. You can exercise as much as you want because this will bring the most positive emotions, doing too much or not enough might not bring out the positive emotions you want and might actually increase these negative emotions in your head; therefore, this could actually lead to overeating.

Eating well is another way to actually stopping you overeating, a healthier mind leads to a more positive mindset and can actually stop your thoughts of needing to overeat to combat negative thoughts. There is a link between poor diet and health and mental health problems. Eating regularly is essential having three meals a day provides you with the energy you need for the day, eating fast release energy foods like sugary drinks and sweets will go into your blood stream immediately and used up very quickly and so you will be more hungry and therefore eat more which can lead to overeating. Eating more slow releasing energy foods such as pasta, rice, and wholegrain breads releases energy more slowly throughout the day which allows you to feel more energised during the day which can improve mindset and mood. Feeling drained from limited energy can immediately hurt your mindset and mood.

Eating a balanced diet is essential for providing you the energy you need for the day. 50% of your diet should be carbohydrates and this is the main source of energy in your diet and essential for you feeling energised for the day. 15% of your diet should be protein this can allow for muscle repair and growth but also reduce hunger which can stop overeating, however eating too much red meat can lead to increase in heart diseases. We all think fat can be bad for you but we also need fat in our own diet, fats such as monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats are known as good fats as they help with the heart, lowering cholesterol levels and decreasing risk of heart diseases. Carbohydrates, proteins, and fats all provides energy but having the right amount of each is essential for a healthier body.

Trigger foods are foods that can lead to you overeating, understanding which foods are your trigger foods can help massively this can be ice cream for example. Especially when you feel down eat something healthier like fruit for example which can bring more benefits to your health but also can stop your overeating.

Reducing the amount of unhealthy foods you eat is helpful but restricting what you eat can actually be more negative than you think. Restrictive diets can actually lead to binge eating because eating food that you don't like won't derive positive emotions but will make you feel more negative decreasing your mood and mindset for the day. Focusing on unprocessed food diets and nutritious foods is the most beneficial for the body.

Eating fibre also helps to reduce overeating. Diets which are high in fibre such as wholegrain pasta and some cereals helps you to feel fuller for longer which in turn means you don't want to snack throughout the day. In turn this leads you to stop overeating during the day.

Don't stop eating at all, this won't help anything because it doesn't make you feel any better in fact it will make you feel so much worse.

The main message for this is to eat healthy because a healthy body can lead to a healthier mindset and health. Overcoming the problem before overeating is always the way to go and using the tips in this chapter to avoid overeating is essential. But don't stop eating, don't restrict what you eat that it makes you feel worse and damages your mental health.