Satisfied or Stuffed?
Food, food, glorious food! It not only fills your tummy, but it can be used to ease sadness, distract from boredom, and cope with stress. No wonder it’s so easy to eat too much. Fast food restaurants on every corner, super-size portions, and mindless eating make overeating a common occurrence these days.
Overeating refers to the concept of consuming more calories than your body’s able to burn through exercise or the activities of normal life. So obviously, overeating leads to weight gain. It doesn’t take long to notice the scale go up as you continue to eat more than you need. As the weight arrives, you’re forced to say goodbye to your skinny jeans, good health, and self-esteem.
Before you eat another bite, you may want to consider these three big dangers of eating too many calories on a regular basis.
The Danger of Discomfort
How many times have you stuffed your face and afterward said to yourself, “I feel really good now”? Unless you enjoy feeling grossly full, it’s never happened. Overeating stretches your stomach and causes bloating, gas, and heartburn. Your belly is distended and your pants feel uncomfortably tight. It’s difficult to move around and painful reflux may keep you awake at night.
The reason you can hardly get out of your chair after a big meal is because your energy level and brain function decrease due to the fact your blood is focused on helping your digestive system deal with all the food. Forget cleaning up the kitchen. What you feel most like doing is taking a nap and letting those calories settle in around your waistline.
The Danger of Disease
With added pounds come added health concerns. Carrying around extra weight puts excessive pressure on your bones and joints and causes achy knees and a painful back. The end result is a lifetime of pain, as an obese person is 60 percent more likely to develop arthritis than a person of normal weight.
Because overeating leads to weight gain, it also increases your risk of heart and blood vessel damage. Being overweight means you’re more likely to suffer from heart disease, high triglycerides, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and stroke. Besides your heart struggling to function properly, your lungs, liver, and pancreas may suffer from overeating, as they must continually work overtime to compensate for excess weight.
Additional diseases and health conditions associated with obesity include certain cancers (colon, endometrial, breast, and gallbladder), sleep apnea, breathing disorders, type 2 diabetes, menstrual issues, infertility, and gallbladder disease.
The Danger of Depression
Repetitive overeating not only harms your physical health, but it can hurt your mental health as well. When you feel insecure about the way you look, you have a lower self-esteem and lack self-confidence. These feelings can lead to depression, anxiety, and social isolation. You may not want to leave the house, you get stressed just thinking about going grocery shopping, and you feel cut off from the rest of the world.
Unfortunately, it’s often a vicious cycle. You overeat, feel depressed because you overate, and cope with your negative emotions by overeating. Sometimes it’s difficult to know which came first—the depression or the weight gain, but studies show obese people are 25 percent more likely to deal with depression and other mood disorders than people of normal weight.
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