Eat a natural response to stress

Some obese overeat because they are stressed and can not find comfort in food. In summary the thesis advanced by Dr. Jean-Philippe Zermati nutritionist Paris and vice-president of the Research Group on Obesity and Overweight (BIG).



He said the stress caused by an "stressor", generates negative emotions. This stressor is generally opposed to using specific responses adapted to use the skills of each. However, when problem can not be resolved, people rely on nonspecific defense mechanisms that help to reduce anxiety and negative emotions. This translates into buying clothes, going on weekend ... or eat. Consumption of food, especially those that you appreciate, would be a natural response to nonspecific stress, intended to provide comfort.

The food beliefs responsible for disturbances

For Dr. Zermati, obesity and overweight are due for some people to a failure of the relationship between food intake and comfort. If this mechanism stops working, the person begins to eat compulsively, to obtain a comfort that she can not find. This problem is caused by food beliefs including the notion of permitted foods and forbidden foods. The person with weight problems can no longer find comfort in swallowing food it believes responsible for his condition. She ate a greater quantity of food "allowed" but remains anxious and stressed.

Loss food sensations

This disorder leads to other eating disorders. When falling for a food "forbidden", it promises to do it again in the future. She feels compelled to eat as much of that food before facing the future scarcity: when is a discrepancy, it is no longer a square but the whole chocolate bar is engulfed by example.

These beliefs are food, according to Dr. Zermati, also lead to a loss of sensation: they impose on persons rhythms of meals and quantities of food to eat. By following these guidelines, the person is no longer guided by his own feelings of hunger or satiety and no longer able to independently regulate food intake.

Denounce the regimes and simplistic explanations of obesity

Dr. Zermati is Vice President of the Research Group on Obesity and overweight (BIG). This combination of nutritionist, psychiatrists, dieticians, general practitioners and specialists for goals, among others, to seek the complex mechanisms of obesity and identify new therapeutic approaches. On the website of BIG, many explanations of the mechanisms of obesity and the evils of most existing schemes are available.