How do you feel about the "overeating addiction" model of losing weight?

[Monster2]

Overeating is a sort of an insanity, isn't it? You know it's bad for you, you know it has horrible long term effects but you do it anyway to make yourself feel good. Do you consider overeating an addiction? It sure seems like it to me. I don't know much about this sort of thing, really, but I'd be interested in why you do or do not consider overeating an addiction.
I've heard of over eaters anonymous, but have no idea if it works, or the kind of results they get. I'll probably post it as a question under "weight loss systems" forums in a few days, but for now, I'd really like to know if it's a good idea to view it as an addiction, and why or why not. Thanks.

 

[clever_plant]

There is an actual medical conditioning where the hypothalamus can't tell you to feel full, and people suffering from it is at risk for actually eating themselves to death. Besides that it isn't a physical addiction as such, but on a more "philosophical" level you might debate the point.

The reason why we love salty, fatty food is because back in the day with old school clubs and loincloths and sable tigers and shit, fat, salt and protein was rare to come by, so, the people why liked it the most and completely binged on it won at evolution. Besides that, people who ate more also won because they just lived longer and had a bigger chance of getting lots of babies.

Nowadays we have all the food in the world available too us (us rich western folk anyways) and so what we evolved into (rewarding you with endorphin for eating, and eating salt and fat) really isn't such an amazing tactic. The food selling people have ofcourse figured that shit out and just make salty fatty food that we eat like there is no tomorrow.

So you could say we're all addicted to endorphin but... that isn't really helpful.. I think?

I think that viewing yourself as suffering from something, is often used as a sort of excuse to be passive. This is in no way a comment on you, please don't think that it is, and it isn't a value judgment on people who does this, it is simply an observation. So if you think of yourself as "suffering from overeating addiction" it might be easier to say "I have this disease I need help and unless I get it there is nothing to do". On the other hand if it empowers you to say "Imma kick this addiction in the groin" then more power to you!

For me the most helpful approach has been "No matter what the reason is, the fact is that I am a fatty. I would feel better by not being a fatty, how do I go about achieving that? I do it by getting less calories in than I use" and then doing it. And avoiding all blame and like... excuses? since in the end it is, to me, not really useful to ponder why I am fat, I am fat, and I need to deal with it.

Anyways, rant over