"I don’t have enough willpower to eat healthy food”.
“I binge eat all the time.”
“I’m a loser because I try to eat healthily, but I can’t.”
“I feel good while eating junk food, but I regret it later.”
These are a few of the many stories I used to tell myself when it comes to eating healthy food. If you’re familiar with these statements, you’re not alone. I told these statements myself several times.
Whenever I binge eat, I always used to blame myself considering it my fault.
What if I tell you it isn’t your fault?
Not only that, what if I tell you how to overcome it?
To know more about why we binge eat, we may have to go back in time — way back to our hunter-gatherer time (~200,000 years ago).
In the book ‘Sapiens‘, the author Yuval Noah Harari asks a couple of important questions regarding our food habits:
- Why do we eat high-calorie food that is doing little good to our bodies?
- Why do we binge on the sweetest and greasiest food we can find?
The eating habits of our ancestors explain the above questions. This is because — for nearly the entire history of our species, we lived as foragers. In the author’s own words:
“In the savannahs and forests they (foragers) inhabited, high-calorie sweets were extremely rare and food in general was in short supply. A typical forager 30,000 years ago had access to only one type of sweet food — ripe fruit. If a Stone Age woman came across a tree groaning with figs, the most sensible thing to do was to eat as many of them as she could on the spot, before the local baboon band picked the tree bare. The instinct to gorge on high-calorie food was hard-wired into our genes. ”
— Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens)
In other words, since food was so scarce, the most sensible thing to do after coming across a high-calorie food was to binge eat it. Otherwise, baboons (some type of monkeys) would finish the entire food.
There you go — it is in our DNA to binge on high-calorie food.
The author further explains:
“Today we may be living in high-rise apartments with over-stuffed refrigerators, but our DNA still thinks we are in the savannah. That’s what makes us spoon down an entire tub of Ben & Jerry’s when we find one in the freezer and wash it down with a jumbo Coke.”
— Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens)
So, it isn’t your fault. Our DNA is hard-wired for binge eating.
Well, now you know why we binge eat — you can blame our ancestors for binge-eating (haha!).
How I implemented it in real life?
Well, you can’t just shrug off blaming our ancestors and keep eating junk food, right?
What can we do to overcome it?
Knowledge is only half the battle. But, taking action is key.
Well, you can read about why we binge eat and appreciate the fact and move on with your life. That’s the knowledge wasted. Knowledge is useless without action. Wisdom lies in applying your knowledge.
Having understood the reason behind binge eating, I kept on reading to know how to fix it. The light bulb moment came while reading the book ‘Atomic Habits‘ by James Clear. There’s an entire chapter dedicated to this concept — “Motivation is Overrated; Environment Often Matters More.” In his own words,
“Your habits change depending on the room you are in and the cues in front of you.
Environment is the invisible hand that shapes human behavior. ”
— James Clear (Atomic Habits)
There you go — your environment has more impact on your life than you think.
When you have all the unhealthy food in the house, your willpower will eventually fade. You will give up and binge eat because it’s in our DNA.
The best thing to crack binge eating is to not buy unhealthy food at all.
You must be thinking, “It’s easy for you to say, but I can’t help but buy the junk food.”
I agree, but if you want to change, taking small actions is the key.
A few tips that helped me —
- Try to go grocery shopping after you eat — not when you’re hungry.
- If you’re tempted to buy junk food, buy a smaller size packet.
- Try to put the junk food behind healthy food in the refrigerator.
- Put healthy food in more obvious locations and hide junk food (less obvious places).
Sometimes, I forget that I have a chips packet in the house until I see it. It’s harder to resist eating after I see it. It’s amazing to see how much impact the environment has on us.
If you look at healthy people, most likely they don’t buy a lot of junk food in the first place. It’s not to say that they don’t buy junk food at all, but they have some kind of a system.
Again, I’m a big fan of small changes. I’m not suggesting to quit junk food completely in one go. Don’t try to radically change your eating habits. It’s easy to fall back into old habits. Make small changes.
Key Takeaway:
Our DNA is hard-wired for binge eating. Instead of resisting junk food, try not to buy them. Or, at least put junk food in the less obvious places in your house. Also, keep healthy food in the most obvious places. It may sound simple, but it actually works. Try it!
Recommended Reading:
- Sapiens by Yuval
- Atomic Habits by James Clear