Overeating? Learn the art of self control to maintain your health

I have been watching my weight for the last two years, but of late I have deviated into junk food once again after I lost my job.

I have no appetite for home-made food and I think that I will be overweight soon. (I think I am already).

I have been trying to stop the habit, but the stress of the loss of job makes me feel as if nobody appreciates me. Is this normal and what should I do?

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In life, there are fewer struggles more difficult for human beings than the challenge to remain within a particular weight bracket.

There are many reasons why the struggle is worthwhile, and most of them are medical. Those who are overweight are more prone to diseases ranging from diabetes, hypertension, arthritis and many others.

One of the mysteries that continue to attract much debate is why some people (and their families) are by nature thin while others are fat.

The simple answer is that like many biological characteristics, the tendency to a particular weight is inherited. Put another way, fat parents, (to some extent anyway) beget fat children.

Other similarly transmitted characteristics include height, skin colour, intelligence and including diseases such as diabetes.

The foregoing, however, is only part of the story, because the environment in which one is brought up is also of importance.

In a sense, it is possible to be brought up in a very strict environment so that you are able to “defeat” the tendency to putting on weight. It is for this reason that self-control is so important in weight control.

That, however, is still not the end of the story because there are other people for whom self-control is not adequate, because it seems as though the default weight for that individual is set at such a high level, that no effort or self-will seems adequate to bring down the weight.

Most people struggling with weight are likely to achieve minimal and temporary change because their struggle is not simply a problem of overeating it is also a problem of the body “not knowing” what is enough food!

This now brings me to the question “what is enough food for an individual?”. Put differently, when one is eating, when does the body say enough? And how does the body know that amount?

It is the stretching of the muscles of the stomach wall —that sends a hormone (message) to the brain, and tell the brain to stop the eating.