The Connection between Hedonic Hunger and Overeating

Do you consistently overeat? When it comes to overeating, there’s so much more involved than just nutrition. Read more on what hedonic hunger is and how to stop eating when full.

Let’s talk about what you eat with. And I don’t mean, whether you eat with a fork and knife or your hands. Some of us eat with much more than our mouth and stomach. We will explore what hedonic hunger is, the science of taste, and how eating with our tongue, eyes, ears, or memory influences whether we eat too much.

First of all, my biggest problem when I was morbidly obese was that I frequently ate the foods I did because I loved how they taste. Even when I wasn’t hungry or was already full.

According to Wikipedia, hedonic hunger or hedonic hyperphagia is “the drive to eat to obtain pleasure in the absence of an energy deficit.”^[1] Particular foods may have a high “hedonic rating”^[2] or individuals may have increased susceptibility to environmental food cues.

Science of Taste

How we taste food goes way beyond our taste buds or what we put in our mouth! Which could explain why you may overeat donuts but not kale.

There are several different factors that influence our taste, and those are taste receptors, volatiles, and gustatory cortex.

We have dedicated taste receptors for the five tastes of sweet, sour, salty, bitter and umami. Preliminary research with mice has shown that these receptors can be turned on or off by stimulating or silencing neurons in the brain (without using food).

Volatiles can completely change our experience of flavor, which is distinct from taste. In National Geographic’s Food Science of Taste, we know that the brain distinguishes between odors we sniff through our nostrils and odors that reach our nasal cavity from behind as we chew and swallow.

(Another good reason to download my FREE Breakfast Blueprint, to replace liquid morning refreshment with tasty breakfasts you can sink your teeth into!).

Gustatory cortex is a part of the brain where you experience taste. When you take a bit of food, cranial nerves and taste bud receptors in your mouth send molecules of your food to olfactory nerve endings in the roof of your nose. These molecules bind to these nerve endings, which then signal the olfactory bulb to send smell messages directly to two important cranial nerves, the facial nerve and the glossopharyngeal nerve. These nerves then communicate taste to your gustatory cortex.

If you have a child who is a picky eater, some of these concepts will be familiar to you.

Some people actually have more taste buds on their tongue, which impacts how they enjoy food. The average number of taste buds we have varies from between 2000 and 10,000. People who have more taste buds, or whose taste buds are more refined are called super tasters. The good news is that our taste buds can become less sensitive as we age.

Maybe you avoid certain foods specifically because of their texture. I know some people who refuse to eat cottage cheese because of the chunky pieces in it.

There is one thing that I am sensitive to in terms of textures. I don’t like raw veggies. Unfortunately, most popular diet plans like Whole30, Zone and Atkins rely upon eating lots of raw veggies.

Another offender for me are chia seeds. They’re a good source of protein. They have lots of vitamins and nutrients that you can’t get from other food sources. I don’t eat chia seeds because I don’t like how they feel in my mouth.

So those are two healthy foods that I avoid even though I know they’re good for me. I’m sure you have at least  couple of examples of your own.

If you’re someone who eats with your tongue, then finding a health program that addresses taste, flavor and texture will be utterly critical to your success. (Note: Let it Go is one of those programs. Join the wait list to be notified of when we open doors in September 2018)

Eating with our Eyes

What other things do we eat with? I mentioned that some of us eat with our eyes.

• If you’re on Instagram or Facebook, you will see tons and tons of food porn.
• If you watch any sort of TV, you will notice that at least 90% of commercials are around food.
• If you’re driving down the highway and you see a billboard of a big juicy hamburger, with melty cheese dripping down the side and a colorful sauce pleasantly placed lettuce and tomato, and your mouth explodes

That could explain why more of us watch people cooking on TV than cook in our own household, according to best-selling author Michael Pollan. Food, and the creation of food, can be a highly sensual and pleasing experience to watch.

People who eat with their eyes enjoy a carefully presented food. Part of the reason why my artist-loving daughter loves Sushi so much is because Sushi is a visual feast. There are beautiful colors involved, there is a gentle balance of complementary textures and elements. It is a visual feast.

Maybe you find yourself eating out at restaurants a lot because it’s not just the food and the visual of the food, but the setup and the environment around that food. So maybe you like to go to restaurants because of the careful table setting and overall presentation. So maybe you find yourself inclined to go to restaurants where that’s the case rather than eating at home.

Now the particular challenge with this is we have messages and visions and visuals of food all around us. It is everywhere. You can hardly ignore these visual cues. Yet, you can reduce their importance on your eating decisions.

What can you do to address these visual feasts? If the messages assault you daily, maybe you can find other ways to enjoy visually stimulating experiences that are separate from food. Maybe you can treat yourself to a meal delivery kit, or take a cooking class. Finally, you can use your good china and napkins at home every day for a restaurant-style experience.

Eating with our Ears

Now I did mention that you can also eat with your ears. What does this mean? If you find yourself hearing a very vivid description of a juicy hamburger on a radio ad, and you find yourself salivating- You might be eating with your ears.

Another way this might come out is if you’re talking about what you should be having for dinner. This conversation happens all the time in my family. If you’re talking about what to have for dinner, the description of certain foods gives you a sense of pleasure, then you probably eat with your ears.

Finally, there is some evidence that taste is genetic. However, we all know that how we are raised can have a bigger influence on how we express our genes. What I mean is if your parents talked about the evils of seafood, then you heard certain messages around a food that you may be genetically averse to. After all, if your mom did not eat fish when she was pregnant, you may not have been introduced to the flavors that predispose you to that food. And, if she further never serves the food or talks negatively about it, your motivation to try it disappears.

Eating with our Memories

One of the last ways you can eat that comes up frequently for my clients is eating with your memory. What? If you’re in the fitness industry, you might have heard the term muscle memory. Basically this idea is the more you do a certain action physically, the more your muscles get into the habit of doing that. There’s a kind of unconsciouis memory that builds into those muscles. It’s a physical habit at that point.

The same concept exists when it comes to eating.

In order to test this theory for yourself, just think of a very strong childhood memory you have. Where were you? What were you doing? And, was food involved in any way?

Our hippocampus stores our memories, and it also is the location where we experience taste. This explains why our sense of smell can evoke emotions and memories more strongly than our other senses. Eating sweet foods causes the brain to form a memory of a meal, according to a new study in the journal Hippocampus, and researchers believe it can actually help you control eating behavior.

I mean it’s a very common one, but you’re eating with your memory because have that memory of establishing a food habit at one point in your life and you don’t know how to get out of that.

Guess what? I can help you get out of that. I used to eat upwards of 4,000 calories a day. I don’t do that anymore, but it took me over a year to retrain myself, retrain my food memories or at least made those memories less important in my future eating decisions.

The whole point of talking about what you eat with is to understand that what you eat does not begin and end with food. It can begin and end with other senses and other descriptions before you’ve even started preparing anything. Until you understand what you’re eating with, you can’t understand how to eat better or how to improve your habits when it comes to eating.

[bctt tweet=”It boils down to what motivates you when it comes to food. #overeating #dieting #health” username=””]

It takes some time to get over that and to address that properly. It had nothing to do with having access to recipes. It had nothing to do with eating more salad. It had a lot to do with my muscle memory because I ate from habit. I ate from established patterns that I had had in my childhood and it was tough for me to get out of that.

If that’s the situation we’re in today I would like to talk to you because this is a really important thing to address. If you address nothing else in your life in terms of your health, this is something that’s really important for you. Schedule a complimentary Weight Loss Breakthrough call with me to discuss further.

I noticed that a number of people in my group coaching program who can’t figure why they’re overeating, how to control hedonic hunger, and how to actually feel satisfied when they eat healthier foods. I cater this program to the people who are in Let it Go group health coaching (coming in September 2018).

Group health coaching is a great way to get the support you need to get through the process of controlling your hedonic hunger.

Do you eat with your tongue, your eyes, your ears, or your memory? I would love to hear your story in the comments, and how you control overeating.