These 7 Things Make Women Overeat (Save This List) - 241
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Ever wondered why you sometimes overeat even though you’re trying your best to stay healthy? The truth is, overeating is often triggered by factors you may not be aware of. In this episode, I break down the hidden triggers that might be sabotaging your efforts and how to take back control.
From psychological triggers to physiological responses, I’ll guide you through the seven most common triggers I’ve identified in my work with thousands of women. You’ll hear about simple hacks to break free from overeating, such as the PFC3 formula, to help you fuel your body more effectively throughout the day. Enjoy the episode!
Conclusion:
Recognizing the triggers that cause you to overeat is the first step in gaining control over your eating habits. You become self-aware and make decisions that align with your health goals. Remember, it’s not about perfection. It’s about progress!
In This Episode:
03:00 Trigger 1: Not eating enough
06:05 Trigger 2: Eating carbs naked
08:01 Trigger 3: Stress and how we respond to it
10:50 Trigger 4: Your “why” is based on weight loss only
12:29 Trigger 5: All or nothing mentality
14:36 Trigger 6: Skipping morning time
16:25 Trigger 7: Going out without a plan
20:05 Conclusion and recap
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Transcript:
[00:00:00] Carrie Lupoli: Most women think overeating is just about willpower or loving food too much. But the truth is the biggest triggers have nothing to do with discipline. And some of them are things that nutritionists, they're not even gonna tell you from how you start your morning to the way you eat that apple to the mindset you carry into a night out.
[00:00:18] Carrie Lupoli: These hidden triggers silently push you to eat more than you want. Then leave you feeling guilty and defeated. Today I am breaking down the seven most common triggers that cause women to overeat, and I promise a few of them are gonna surprise you.
[00:00:35] Carrie Lupoli: So welcome to today's episode, all about these seven triggers that I have seen over the years of working with thousands of women that have triggered us into. Overeating, and I say all day long. Self-consciousness is a disease. Self-awareness is health. We're gonna stop comparing ourselves to everybody else, and we are going to raise our own self-awareness so that we can work to be the healthiest [00:01:00] version of ourselves.
[00:01:02] Carrie Lupoli: And today's episode, you're gonna notice I have got a little bit of a, I got a little bit of a cold I'm coming off of, so I have a little raspy voice. Somebody told me earlier today that it sounded sexy, so I'm just gonna go with. Fat. So today's triggers, yes. Again, we're not self-aware enough. We don't understand our body enough.
[00:01:20] Carrie Lupoli: We, uh, for too long have been the passenger in, in our own plane. If our body is a plane and we've been sitting in the passenger seat constantly, just kind of like sitting back and letting other people tell us what's going on, and then when things come up like. Overeating or binging or having uncontrollable cravings, you're just left with guilt and shame without actual understanding of what's going on.
[00:01:46] Carrie Lupoli: And so over the years, I have documented seven things that trigger us that cause us. Some of them are psychological, some of 'em are physiological, but being aware of them is going to change everything for you because [00:02:00] I always say again, self-awareness is health and what is our goal? If our goal is to become the healthiest version of ourselves from the inside and the outside, then we've got to learn these types of things.
[00:02:11] Carrie Lupoli: Because this isn't about something working because you've lost weight. Weight gain is a symptom of health and hormones and all of the habits and the cues and, and the familiarity our brain has gone through over the last, how many decades you've been dieting, looking to lose weight. It, it's never going to support you even if you have the most perfect meal plan in the world.
[00:02:35] Carrie Lupoli: Even if you learn to eat in the way that I teach my clients, without calorie counting or macro counting or any of that, it's not gonna matter if you're not self-aware and you understand your personality, your triggers, and you're really digging into the science of behavior change. So today we're gonna like outline all of these things.
[00:02:51] Carrie Lupoli: We're gonna talk about what your body needs and what your mind needs, and how to structure your lifestyle so that these triggers don't continue. To trigger [00:03:00] themselves. Okay, so trigger number one, not eating enough. Like what? How does not eating enough cause me to overeat? Well, diet culture. That has taught us to restrict and restriction always backfires.
[00:03:19] Carrie Lupoli: Like if you're like, you want what you can't have, right? Like that saying, like, so many sayings doesn't get brought about for nothing. There's truth behind it. And if we want what we can't have than our body. If it can't have certain foods, it just naturally emotionally wants them. And it's almost like when they are in front of you, then you just like can't control yourself.
[00:03:45] Carrie Lupoli: But very often this has to do with just the physiology of our brain and the way that it works, but also. What's so interesting 'cause this, this trigger is both a physiological response and a psychological response. 'cause psychologically, right? Like [00:04:00] we, we want what we can't have. But physiologically, when we don't actually feel ourself enough, when we restrict, when we keep going into eat less, move more, our blood sugar drops.
[00:04:09] Carrie Lupoli: When our blood sugar drops, that is when our, our kind of, our body's just like, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Like, we can be get, we can get hungry. Which is like if you've ever been hangry, you know you are craving chips, you are craving sugar, you are craving bread. And it's not because you don't have enough willpower, it's 'cause your blood sugar is really low and it's yelling at us.
[00:04:29] Carrie Lupoli: But for those of us that have kind of conditioned our body not to listen to hunger cues, you don't get fed that level of information as much as you probably would if you actually responded to hunger cues. So very often. Like, I'll have women that say, I'm not hungry until noon. Well, that's because you told your body that you're not gonna feed it.
[00:04:49] Carrie Lupoli: And yet we have uncontrollable cravings. That's one and the same. Our body will push us to overeat. If we skip meals, if we [00:05:00] undereat, it almost actually guarantees that overeating will happen later. So when you think about this message, I want you to think about how consistency and balance will keep you out of that binge restricts cycle.
[00:05:13] Carrie Lupoli: There is a psychological piece to it. Doesn't mean you don't have enough willpower, it's just that our brain is conditioned to want what you have told it. It can't have. Physiologically, your body is just literally responding to the lack of nutrients, and it's saying to you, oh my gosh, we need to eat. And it's like, you won't be able to stop.
[00:05:36] Carrie Lupoli: It's like an itch that you can't stop scratching. And yet, if we can actually, the, the approach that I teach is called PSC three, and we're gonna talk more about that throughout this podcast. Everybody talk about it through all, all, all my podcasts typically. It's really around the idea of fueling your body all day long and always being ready to eat, satisfied, listening to the cues, and it's amazing how when you do that, your [00:06:00] body doesn't crave those things that it did before.
[00:06:02] Carrie Lupoli: That brings me to number two. So trigger number two is often around the concept that people talk to me about. They're like, I eat healthy. I eat healthy, but like I still can't lose the weight, or I still find myself binging, or I have terrible cravings. Because what people don't understand is you can eat healthy.
[00:06:21] Carrie Lupoli: If you don't understand blood sugar stabilization, you can be whacking out your blood sugar all day long and it's going to cause a lot of the same effects of not eating. So if you're eating carbs naked, I like to call it like, I want you to think about protein, fat, and carbs. There's three macronutrients, just free.
[00:06:43] Carrie Lupoli: All food is a protein, fat, or carb. So people that don't realize it fruits and vegetables, their carbohydrates. They're just not dense carbohydrates or refined carbs like refined sugars like bread and pasta. But they are still carbs and there are carbs that are lower on the glycemic index than others.
[00:06:59] Carrie Lupoli: However, [00:07:00] there's three macronutrients, P, F, and C. Macro means big, important, right? And, and here's the crazy amazing thing. They were actually meant to be eaten together. So when you eat, this is why macro counting is so ridiculous. You can eat as many carbs as you want, as long as you're getting 'em in for the day.
[00:07:16] Carrie Lupoli: Like our body doesn't work that way when you eat carbs by itself and or I eat carbs all day long, but when you eat them by themselves, you're gonna spike your blood sugar. And apple spikes my blood sugar. I know this because I wear a continuous glucose monitor at different times during the year. And so even healthy carbs like fruit oats.
[00:07:35] Carrie Lupoli: Oatmeal for breakfast on its own without a protein or a fat is go is going to spike your blood sugar. Boom, super high. Just like a rollercoaster. Like what goes up must come down. So a spike will lead to a crash. That crash leads to cravings. It will lead to overeating. So dress up your carbs, make sure you have your PFC three formula there.
[00:07:54] Carrie Lupoli: And it's not about cutting carbs, it's about balancing that. And so many of us don't know that and don't [00:08:00] understand how that's triggering. Okay, trigger number three. Stress. People think stress is inevitable. It's just stress. I'm just stressed out and I can't do anything about it. Very unpopular opinion, I'm about to share.
[00:08:12] Carrie Lupoli: Stress is a mindset. Stress is how we perceive a situation, and I am not saying at all that it is made up in our mind. But it is, stress is all about how we are reacting to something. So I just, we need to say that first of all, but we have to understand what physically happens when we are stressed. The reason why I say like it's a mindset is because we can actually work to mitigate stress, and it doesn't mean we just have to eliminate all the stressful things in our life.
[00:08:42] Carrie Lupoli: We have to learn how to look at situations differently. To interpret them. To handle them because you know, there are two people that can, can handle a situation one way, and then how they can handle a situation another [00:09:00] way. And I think it's so interesting, um, like I always tell this story about how I was at Starbucks once and it was 5 59.
[00:09:07] Carrie Lupoli: They open up at six. There were a whole bunch of people waiting for it, for it to open, and we're all waiting. And at like 6 0 1, she still hadn't opened the doors yet. And there was a guy that was literally losing his ever loving mind. Like he was banging on the glass. He was so mad, he was clearly stressed.
[00:09:22] Carrie Lupoli: And the rest of us are just like. Uh, what's going on? We were in the same exact situation. One person got super stressed by it, the rest of us didn't. So. It isn't just an inevitable given, it's how we are handling, responding to a situation. But needless to say, this is why it's important because stress is debilitating and, and, and stress increases our cortisol, which raises our glucose.
[00:09:47] Carrie Lupoli: When you have a glucose spike, this is how high blood sugar stabilization so important. It then primes the body for fight or flight. Stress pulls decision making from the hippocampus, which is the knowledge center of your brain. [00:10:00] It just like, literally, it's almost like. You know, I know what to do. I just don't do it.
[00:10:03] Carrie Lupoli: Like you don't even know what to do. When you're stressed, your amygdala gets hijacked. It actually gets bigger in your brain when you're emotional, when you're stressed, when you're angry, and you actually do things that you wouldn't normally do when you are under that stress. That's why we eat emotionally, even when we know better.
[00:10:20] Carrie Lupoli: Because when we are stressed, when we're angry, when we are bored, all of those emotions, they actually trigger an I call an amygdala hijack. And when that hijack happens. Even though we know better, literally our hippocampus, our knowledge sensor is smaller at that point. And actually the amygdala takes over and then we do things that we wouldn't do if that wasn't happening.
[00:10:44] Carrie Lupoli: So managing stress will allow you to manage cravings. All right, trigger number. When your why is based on weight loss, like I want you to think about what do you want? Why do you want it? I wanna lose weight, you know? I wanna lose [00:11:00] weight. I wanna lose weight with, if your why is like, I wanna lose weight 'cause I wanna feel more confident, I wanna lose weight because I wanna look better in pictures.
[00:11:05] Carrie Lupoli: Right? I just, I just feel better when I am a lower weight. I'm not saying that that is wrong, I'm just saying when that is your focus, like my why is around true deep health and longevity. The why behind it is based on what I want for my life, my purpose, my heart, how I wanna show up for my family as opposed to worrying about what other people think of me.
[00:11:28] Carrie Lupoli: This number on the scale defining my worth. When your why is only about losing weight, first of all, that goal can feel really far away, and it's also a goal you cannot control in terms of the number on a scale. So we need to just, that's a sidebar. We need to ignore that as a goal. No more goal weights.
[00:11:43] Carrie Lupoli: Okay. But it's, it's like what happens when, you know, stress hits when life is crazy. When you don't have time, scale's, not budging. You're like, forget it. I'm not gonna lose 40 pounds by tomorrow, so I'm gonna eat the cake today. We will overeat when our why is not [00:12:00] strong, when it's not around purpose, energy, living fully longevity.
[00:12:03] Carrie Lupoli: That's what sustains us. That's what allows us to make decisions that align with what the healthiest version of us does, says, sinks and believes because we are doing it for a much deeper reason. So a shallow why will absolutely fuel overeating, but a deep why will fuel resilience and resiliency is what we need when life is tough.
[00:12:28] Carrie Lupoli: All right, trigger number five. It's this all or nothing mentality. What I love and in my book that I'm writing, um, I'm, I'm, I just finished the whole first draft. I'm so excited. It's called Corset or Crown the Truth. About weight loss, self-worth and purpose. At least that's the working title right now. And in the book I write, you are no longer when you follow the approach that I'm talking about, that I teach, that the philosophy, you're no longer, there's no, there's no wagon, actually, you're no longer on the wagon, there's no wagon to fall off of.[00:13:00]
[00:13:00] Carrie Lupoli: It's a lifestyle. It becomes an identity. It becomes who you are for the right reasons. So this all or nothing mentality, this diet culture. You're on the wagon or off the wagon. You can't do a diet on vacation. You can't do a diet when you're stressed. You can't do a diet when you're busy. You can't do a diet when life lives, so you're off the wagon and then you give yourself all this permission to just like do and be and eat whatever you want.
[00:13:23] Carrie Lupoli: When you're on the wagon, that's when you got like calorie counting the app, the the macro tracking, the the chicken, the broccoli, you're on the wagon. So when you're off the wagon, you can do whatever you want. When you're on the wagon, you're really strict. And let's be honest, one slip up, right? Like you fall off the wagon for a hot second, you're like, that's it.
[00:13:43] Carrie Lupoli: I'm done for the week. I'll start again Monday. And then you just allow yourself to go. This is why PFC three is so powerful, because a protein, fat and carb every three hours, ready to eat, satisfied, ready to satisfied. And it's like physically, it's just incredible for your body. But emotionally, it's really amazing too because it's [00:14:00] like, okay, I wasn't on point for that meal.
[00:14:02] Carrie Lupoli: I got another meal coming up in three hours. It's like. You know when you hit hit a red light, it's not like you like or you drive through a red light. You're not gonna be like, oh, well I got away with that. I didn't get an accident. I didn't get a ticket. I'm just gonna keep running through all the red lights.
[00:14:16] Carrie Lupoli: No, but that's what happens in the all or nothing diet mentality, right? One slip up, that's it. Forget it. I'm off. I'm just gonna blow through all the red lights for the rest of the weekend. Progress is not perfection. Flexible consistency wins every time. So no more, all or nothing mentality. Okay. Trigger number six.
[00:14:38] Carrie Lupoli: Ah, there is a reason why I go live every single morning, Monday through Friday on Instagram. I only go, I, I held back on weekends because I just needed time to fill my own cup. But every single day, Monday through Friday, 6 45 in the morning, Eastern time. I go live on Instagram because I am so bullish that morning time is the [00:15:00] most important time.
[00:15:00] Carrie Lupoli: It allows you to reset and realign your intentions with what you say you want out of your life. Without intentional reflection, without intentional planning, we drift into reactivity. Morning time grounds your day. It sets your mindset, aligns intentions with actions, and without it you're just vulnerable.
[00:15:22] Carrie Lupoli: You're vulnerable to vulnerable, to reacting instead of responding when food is in front of you. And emotions rise because you haven't planned out your day because you haven't built in margin, because you haven't been intentional about what's coming up. You're just so vulnerable. And so that's why make sure, if you're not following me on Instagram, make sure you go and follow me, Carrie Napoli.
[00:15:46] Carrie Lupoli: And even if you can't join me live, 'cause let's say you're on the Pacific time zone and you're like 3 45, it's just not gonna happen, Carrie. That's fine. You just watch the replay and, and teaching around morning time is really important. And I actually have, um, a whole resource for people on [00:16:00] the three parts of morning time that I have proven over the years and years and years that I've been teaching this why and how it's so important.
[00:16:08] Carrie Lupoli: I have research based. Information about those three parts of morning time, and I write about it all in my book too, which when it comes out you can do that, but you can't get that yet. So, um, I'll put in the notes the morning, um, time routine and how you can really work to allow that to get your day off to the right start.
[00:16:25] Carrie Lupoli: All right, now the last trigger, and this one is like, it makes sense, but I don't think most of us do it. Let's say we're going out for dinner, the holidays coming, there's a holiday party. If you're doing morning time, right, and you're, you know, basically what's going on in your life that day. Now there's always gonna be curve balls, there's always gonna be things, right?
[00:16:47] Carrie Lupoli: But you know, you're having dinner out tonight, you're going out for friends, you're having a party, what, whatever. I want you to make a decision before you walk into that door about what your plan is gonna [00:17:00] be, because too often. We go out, go into a restaurant, a party, a, a situation without a plan. And so because we don't have a plan, we end up walking into a vacation, a party, whatever it is, with these kind of like emotions and, uh, environment and either peer pressure or whatever it is.
[00:17:29] Carrie Lupoli: And that's when overeating will happen. And then is often followed by regret, but a simple plan where you're just like, like, I want you to think about it this way. Think about red light, green light, yellow light, the yellow light, red light, green light. Remember that game, like red light, green light, like, and you would run and stop and all that.
[00:17:43] Carrie Lupoli: I want you to think a little bit like that. I'm not legalistic about, like, again, you're never, there's no wagon to get on or off of, but I want you to think about it like this, okay? If you're green light, you are really focused on whole clean, unprocessed foods. It's serving [00:18:00] your body, really working on that PFC balance to keep your blood sugar stabilized and really focused on true.
[00:18:09] Carrie Lupoli: Serving your body, and I want you to think about a red light meal as like I am truly serving my soul. I am not worried about whether I get an ounce of protein in, I'm gonna drink my wine. I am not gonna think about it. I might have like a big bowl of pasta, butter, whatever. It's a red light meal. Now, the longer you are living a lifestyle of bl stabilizing your blood sugar, the more your body can handle those red light meals because it's sort of like, girl, go out and have fun.
[00:18:37] Carrie Lupoli: We got you. We are rested, we are strong. No problem. And then a yellow light meal might be somewhere in the middle. You know, you're like, you know, I don't usually do, um, processed foods, but I'm gonna a baseball game and I'm gonna go do chicken nuggets. I, I don't, I don't know. It could just be somewhere in the middle.
[00:18:52] Carrie Lupoli: It doesn't have to be like any sort of big, massive, like. Plan. It's just some level of intentionality, right? Maybe you say, [00:19:00] I'm gonna, I'm gonna, um, eat whatever, like, I'm just gonna like kind of graze and I'm gonna be intentional, but I'm not gonna drink. Okay? Or maybe I'm gonna have a glass of wine and I am going to be, you know, as clean as I can, but I'm not going restrict myself If I see something I like, but I'm going to eat until satisfied.
[00:19:17] Carrie Lupoli: I'm not gonna overeat. Maybe that's a yellow light meal and that you make that plan before you go in. That's it. And if you decide I'm going to have a red light meal, don't break that promise to yourself. If you say, I'm gonna have a green light meal, don't break that promise to yourself. Have your your husband, your, your partner, your friend, whoever you're going with, have him help you hold you accountable.
[00:19:34] Carrie Lupoli: Listen, this is really what my intention is. This is what I wanna do. And, uh, see if you can do that. Now, if you don't, no guilt, just data. You actually just analyze, especially at morning time the next day and say, okay, what was the trigger that caused me from deviating from my plan? I'm not mad at myself.
[00:19:51] Carrie Lupoli: There's no guilt, there's no shame. But when we go out without a plan, we will almost always overeat. Just a simple plan allows you to be intentional [00:20:00] before action really keeps you from overeating. Super simple. So those are the seven triggers. Okay? Overeating is not random. It's triggered and, and once you can name the triggers.
[00:20:15] Carrie Lupoli: You can take back your power. So I want you to reflect which of the seven triggers do you think shows up in your life more often than not. Just as a little recap, trigger number one is not eating enough. Trigger number two is eating carbs, like you mean Alfie, but you're just eating your carbs naked.
[00:20:32] Carrie Lupoli: You're not really realizing the balance is necessary. Trigger number three is stress in your amygdala, just getting hijacked and taken over the knowledge center of your brain. Trigger number four. Is that your why? Is not deep enough. It's based on weight loss. It's based on ego versus heart. Trigger number five.
[00:20:50] Carrie Lupoli: You have that all or nothing mentality. You're on the wagon or you're off the wagon. Trigger number six is skipping morning time. That can be a big one. It's [00:21:00] amazing how important that is. And trigger number seven, going out without a plan. So let me know which one do you feel like has been the one that's like getting you the most and remember?
[00:21:14] Carrie Lupoli: Self-awareness is health, so just being aware of this is going to give you a plan of action for the next time. All right, well, I see you at morning time. I hope I do. All right. Wherever you are in your journey, there is a place for you to be able to thrive and to be able to live a life of fruit, food freedom, and becoming the healthiest version of yourself.
[00:21:34] Carrie Lupoli: So let's go get it.
