How to Stop Overeating: 13 Tips to Avoid Eating Too Much

What Is Overeating?

In its simplest definition, overeating means consuming more food than the body needs. When someone overeats, they eat past the point of fullness and may eat in response to emotions rather than physical hunger.¹ While it is common for people to overeat occasionally, chronic overeating can lead to eating disorders.

Overeating often relates to being stressed. When stressed, the body releases cortisol, which activates the fight-or-flight response. This can trigger cravings for certain substances, including food.² Overeating is not the same as binge eating disorder because a binge typically consists of eating high amounts of food quickly, secretively, and shamefully. Overeating means eating more food than needed, but this pattern can lead to binges.

How Do You Know When You’ve Overeaten?

Overeating generally results in physical discomfort. This discomfort tends to be mild or moderate (it’s more severe when someone binges). Symptoms of overeating can include various bodily sensations like bloating, heartburn, nausea, gas, dehydration, acid reflux, sluggishness, and increased fatigue. It’s also common for people to feel like they won’t be hungry again for a while.

Symptoms of Overeating

Most people feel sluggish immediately or soon after overeating. They may want to lie down or relax. Others feel better taking a walk or engaging in some light physical movement. Sometimes, the idea of eating might seem unfathomable. People may experience immediate gastrointestinal distress, including constipation or diarrhea.

Common symptoms of overeating include:

• Nausea
• Stomach pain
• Gas
• Heartburn
• Headache
• Fatigue
• Thirst

How Long Will Symptoms of Overeating Last?

Overeating symptoms can last a few hours, but they shouldn’t last longer than a day. Many people find that drinking water or getting some physical activity helps them feel better. It’s important to avoid trying to compensate after a period of overeating. The best thing to do is resume your normal eating habits as soon as you can.

Causes of Overeating

People overeat for both physical and emotional reasons. On a logistical level, portion sizes, hunger signals, and specific types of food may contribute to overeating. In addition, emotional triggers like boredom, stress, loneliness, and even joy can also coincide with using food to cope with feelings or as an emotional reward. Finally, overeating may also be a symptom of various mental health issues.

Common causes of overeating include:

• Emotional eating: Emotional eating refers to eating in response to emotional needs instead of physical hunger. Emotional eating doesn’t inherently lead to overeating, but the two often go hand-in-hand.
• Depression: While some people lose their appetite when they feel depressed, others have an increased appetite.³ In addition, some people with depression may overeat to soothe their emotions or experience brief surges of pleasure.
• Waiting too long to eat: Sometimes, waiting too long to eat can result in overeating. Hunger may heighten impulsivity and weaken decision-making, and that can lead people to overeat.
• Dieting: Dieting often encourages people to ignore or manipulate their hunger cues. Feeling deprived can also be a trigger for overeating.
• Celebration: It’s common for people to overeat during festive times, such as the holidays. During these occasions, eating is a focal point, and it’s a way people bond together.⁴ You may also have access to food that you typically don’t eat.
• Complicated relationship with food: Feelings of anxiety, shame, or guilt around food can trigger disordered eating or even an eating disorder. This can result in patterns of overeating.
• Chronic stress: Many people overeat as a way to soothe themselves and manage chronic stress. Stress eating becomes a coping mechanism to deal with the adversities of life.

13 Tips for How to Stop Overeating

There’s nothing wrong with occasionally overeating. However, patterns of feeling out of control with eating can worsen progressively over time. In addition, chronic overeating may result in a myriad of physical and emotional health issues. It’s important to remember that change takes time.

Here are thirteen tips for how to stop overeating:

1. Practice Mindful Eating

Many people eat while distracted, causing them to ignore satiety signals or even miss the physical sensations associated with the meal. Learning how to eat mindfully can help you build a healthier relationship with food and eating in general. The key is to reduce distractions and simply be present with your body when you eat.

2. Try to Implement Some Intuitive Eating

Intuitive eating can feel like a frightening concept for people who overeat. However, this type of eating focuses on gentle nutrition, which allows you to embrace honoring hunger and making better peace with food. People who intuitively eat trust that their bodies will guide them to eating the right amounts of food.

With intuitive eating, you eat what you want to eat when you are hungry and aim to stop eating when you feel full. You also strive to reject diet culture as much as possible. This can reduce overeating in time because there’s no real scarcity effect. There’s no fear that it will be the last time that you can indulge in a certain kind of food.

3. Understand Your Emotional Triggers

Overeating is often a form of emotional eating. You may turn to food to cope with uncomfortable feelings like sadness, boredom, anger, or loneliness. It can be helpful to reflect on these triggers and think about other ways to take care of yourself when experiencing those specific emotional states.

4. Don’t Restrict Your Food

Crash dieting, restriction, and rigid eating often trigger a scarcity effect. When people feel deprived, they’re more likely to want to overeat or binge on whatever feels taboo. That’s why trying to make room for the foods you love is important. When they feel more neutral, they lose some of their emotional hold.

5. Meet With a Registered Dietitian

A registered dietitian can help people who struggle with overeating by assessing nutrient absorption, reviewing food behaviors, and discussing weight cycling patterns. Dietitians can reinforce building healthier relationships with food by teaching individuals how to understand their hunger and look after their physical bodies.⁵ When an eating disorder is present, these professionals often work in tandem with therapists and doctors.

6. Reduce or Avoid Mood-Altering Substances

Drugs and alcohol can enhance appetite, and they may also reduce your inhibitions when it comes to eating. For example, many people can relate to overeating when they’re intoxicated or hungover. In addition, marijuana can coincide with the munchies. If this is something you struggle with, it may be worth reevaluating your substance use.

7. Get More Sleep

Research shows that people with sleep issues may be more vulnerable to desiring food, which can lead to habits of overeating and binge eating. Studies show that sleep deprivation can also impact appetite-regulating hormones and increase overall caloric intake.⁶ If sleep is an issue, commit to practicing sleep hygiene and try to get more rest each day.

8. Make a List of Coping Skills

Reducing or stopping overeating often comes down to replacing eating with other activities like taking a walk, listening to music, or calling a friend. It may be helpful to write down things you can do when you feel triggered to eat. Keep in mind that it’s beneficial to have a variety of skills, as each will call for different levels of motivation and energy.

9. Check In With Your Body Before and After Eating

It’s important to increase awareness of your bodily sensations and satiety signals. Practice checking in with yourself before, during, and after eating meals and snacks. Pay attention to how certain foods feel when you eat them. Notice how your body feels just after digestion. The goal isn’t necessarily to change anything. But increasing this insight can help you better understand your body’s needs.

10. Join an Eating Disorder Support Group

Although problems with overeating are common, many people feel alone in their struggles. It’s typical to experience a sense of shame or embarrassment. An eating disorder support group can offer you a sense of camaraderie. You’ll be around people who experience the same difficulties and are trying to improve their well-being.

11. Treat Yourself Without Food

Many people reward themselves with food. This is a pattern that’s often engrained early in childhood, and it’s reinforced throughout the lifespan. Self-care is important, but expanding how you treat yourself without automatically turning to food may be beneficial. This may include watching feel-good movies, taking warm baths, rereading a favorite book, or getting a massage.

12. Don’t Compensate for Overeating

Some people try to counteract the effects of overeating by exercising intensely, fasting, or crash dieting. While these methods may provide a sense of immediate relief, they often backfire and reinforce ongoing cycles of intense hunger with overeating. In addition, they compound shame and internal frustration. Repeated patterns of compensation can result in an exercise addiction or developing bulimia nervosa.

13. Remember It’s a Journey

People rarely stop overeating completely all at once. Instead, it’s far more typical to have an up-and-down journey full of success and setbacks. Remember that you can learn from each setback; these difficult moments don’t mean you’ve failed at anything. The key is to try to stay on your path and practice positive affirmations and self-kindness.

Treatment Options for Overeating & Eating Disorders

Some people can reduce or stop overeating on their own. But others might try various self-help measures and still struggle. If you’re having a hard time with overeating, you may benefit from professional help. You may have an eating disorder if you have a distorted relationship with food or attempt to compensate for your overeating. A therapist can help you develop coping skills for your eating disorder as well as unravel what may be driving the eating disorder..

Treatment options for overeating and eating disorders include:

• Enhanced cognitive behavior therapy (CBT-E): CBT-E is a specific type of therapy designed for treating eating disorders. It implements self-monitoring, self-identified coping strategies, and relapse prevention.
• Trauma-focused therapies: There is an overlap between trauma and eating disorders. Processing and healing from trauma in trauma-focused therapy can help people better cope with their stress.
• Online eating disorder treatment programs: Online eating disorder therapy options like Equip Health and Within Health offer evidence-based treatment. These options may benefit people who need treatment but also can’t or don’t want to travel for care.
• Group therapy: Group therapy for eating disorders may include topics rooted in psychoeducation, nutrition, self-esteem, and healthy communication. These groups provide a sense of support and connection for people who often feel alone in their experiences.
• Family therapy: Family therapy can be beneficial, particularly for younger people still living with their parents or other caregivers. This type of therapy encourages everyone to identify their needs and boundaries within the system as a whole.

Where to Find Professional Help for Eating Disorders

Eating disorders are complex in nature, but they can also be highly dangerous and even fatal. If you are struggling with eating disorder symptoms, it’s important to seek professional guidance. You can find a therapist or treatment provider by talking to your primary care physician or asking trusted loved ones for referrals. You can also use an online therapist directory to find an eating disorder specialist.