After a fair few years of training and eating to support my training and manipulate my body composition, I still struggle with negative feelings after overeating. First off, I would like to put the disclaimer out there that overeating and binge eating are very different things. Overeating is usually because you are hungry, bored, get carried away at an occasion/meal out, etc. Binge eating is driven by negative emotions and is usually taken way past the point of fullness. Binge eating disorder is a real issue which you should seek professional help for, not a blog post!
Whatever your approach to eating, be it macros, a plan or just mindful intuitive eating, it can be difficult to keep a positive mindset after eating more than you had planned. Here’s how to move on without letting it discourage you!
Address the cause of your overeating
Why did you find yourself overeating? Did you not take food to work so ended up indulging in vending machine snacks? Did you get stressed revising for an upcoming exam and deal with it by eating? Work out why you overate and consider how you can prevent it happening again in future. Maybe you were just really hungry. We’ll go back to that one later!
Put things into perspective
Sometimes, it can seem like it’s the end of the world because you ate a few 100, 1000 calories more than you were aiming for. But, did you eat those calories tucking into a pizza and watching a film with your partner? Or at a family member’s birthday party? Remind yourself what's really important.
Perhaps you just had a big leg day and were a lot more active that day. Your body wants to maintain homeostasis so will naturally crave more food to recover. Always remember that you eat to train, you don’t train to eat! It’s about fueling performance and growth, not earning your food.
Remind yourself of successes away from dieting
Your diet should only be a tiny part of your life and priorities. Remind yourself of things that you have excelled in recently and be proud of yourself. Your achievements will always outweigh the failures!
Write a list if you have to of areas of your life that you’re doing well in and things that you like about yourself.
Increase intake (diet breaks, refeeds, reverse diet)
I could tell you dozens of ways that I’ve found to put off eating or give the illusion of being more full than I am, but at the end of the day, I’m not going to promote being uncomfortably hungry all the time. Hunger before a meal is normal, but your body is telling you something if you are never remotely full. Perhaps you are basing your intake on what a calorie calculator online told you it should be, what your Fitbit says you expend, or macros someone you look up to on social media diets on. All of these things can be incredibly, incredibly inaccurate and unsuitable.
Ideally, you want to just listen to your body and eat until you’re satiated. If you’re not at that stage yet (read my post on intuitive eating) you might want to add in a diet break, a refeed day or reverse diet so that you can gradually increase things and closely monitor changes in your body composition.
At the end of the day, we can't all be as full on as somebody on a bodybuilding prep 100% of the time. Do your best and remember that it is your effort and consistency over time, not the odd out-of-the-ordinary event which adds up to change.
