I came across this article "Why Am I Overeating Over and Over Again?" at this link: Maria's Last Diet Newsletter . I'm copying and pasting it in its entirety. Read it for some insight as to why you might be overeating and repeating.
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Why am I overeating over and over again?
Overeating and weight gain can be addicting. The addiction is not to the food itself; it is to a mood altering or emotion relieving process.
Because overeating and weight gain do not make the desired emotional corrections a person is seeking, a vicious cycle gets created. When emotions are relieved and moods are altered by overeating, a person has less desire and less chance to try out other more adaptive means of mood regulation. The person’s dependency on overeating as the primary solution grows. Eventually, overeating and being overweight become the major concerns and all effort is focused only on dieting and losing weight.
Solving eating and weight problems by eating and weight regulation when you’re using weight and overeating to help regulate your moods and emotions, is a recipe for defeat. For an effective solution, the focus has to shift to the real regulatory issues.
To find the real regulatory issues, look for what is hard for you to deal with in your life. Look for the feelings, moods, personal situations, and social situations that throw you. Look into your way of resolving conflict. Then see how you use food to help you in these situations.
Getting more familiar with the real issues can cause you to experience the very stress you’ve been avoiding by eating. Learning to tolerate this stress is a good exercise. The act of tolerating stress actually reduces stress.
The process of getting to know yourself more fully as you increase your stress tolerance leads to emotional understanding. With emotional understanding, you feel more able to conduct your life in a good way. Your patterns of overeating and weight gain will loosen their hold on you. This is because you won’t need to hold on to them to adjust your moods and relieve your feelings. You can now rely on the more immediate route of coping with your personal emotional matters directly.
© 2007 Maria's Last Diet