Why do you always want to eat two more bites when you are full?

Hedonic hunger

1. In the 1950s, French scientist Jacques Lomatin did an interesting experiment on mice: when mice were given only one food, the mice would stop eating when they were full; When it came to food, the mice ate almost three times as much each time they ate new food. That is to say, the richer the dishes you are faced with, the more you will eat.
2. Barbara Rawls of Oxford University and her colleagues have rediscovered this effect: they call it sensory-specific satiety, which means that if we eat just one simple dish, we quickly will be full, and the new taste will stimulate people to eat again.
   
   So when you reach for that extra leek bun, your craving for it comes not from hunger nor from the need for food to sustain life but from a complex urge called "hedonic hunger", Simply put, it’s greed. The origin of ghrelin "ghrelin" is the stomach, the only peptide known to have an "appetite-promoting" effect. It rises before your usual meal or when you haven’t eaten for a long time. So, it’s this hormone that’s reminding you to put something in your stomach. Recently, "Cell Reports" magazine pointed out: ghrelin can make Food and Food taste irresistibly attractive.

Factors that affect ghrelin

1. Dietary factors food entering the body will increase blood sugar levels. When the "glucose sensor" on the "ghrelin cell" detects the increase in blood sugar, it will inhibit the secretion of "ghrelin". When the diet is insufficient, the sensor detects a drop in blood sugar and stimulates the secretion of "ghrelin".
2. The sympathetic adrenal sympathetic nerve is excited, and the secretion of adrenaline and ghrelin will increase, enhancing people’s desire to eat.
3. Eating behavior Most obese people with binge eating disorder have a vicious circle caused by lipid metabolism and endocrine disorders, which increases the number of ghrelin cells in their bodies, but the overall sensitivity to food intake is greatly reduced, so they will feel sick as soon as they eat. It’s hard to stop feeling.
4. Research on emotional factors shows that when people are in great anxiety and depression, the brain will stimulate the body to secrete ghrelin, which makes people unconsciously overeat. Many people think eating can relieve anxiety, but it’s just using food to suppress ghrelin.
5. Energy balance When the body’s energy is insufficient, the brain will stimulate the secretion of "ghrelin" and then order the body to start eating behavior and decomposing liver sugar to replenish energy. When the body has excess energy, the brain will inhibit the secretion of "ghrelin", and then the body will feel "unstoppable". How to control ghrelin Although it is difficult to artificially control the secretion of ghrelin and dopamine in the face of "hedonic hunger", this does not mean we are helpless.

We can deal with hedonic hunger in a few ways:

1. Exercise Many studies have pointed out that moderate exercise daily can offset the damage caused by short-term overeating.
2. Don’t be halfhearted. Many psychological studies show that we eat more food when our attention is distracted. While watching a soap opera, movie, or ball game, a pile of food can be wiped out before you know it.
3. Rejecting a buffet will always give people the illusion that what you eat is what you earn. The defense line of self-control collapsed in minutes.
4. Keep the mood comfortable. When people are troubled or depressed, they instinctively look for food to comfort themselves and suppress the "ghrelin" produced in the body.
5. Look for nothing. Research shows that people generally only crave food when they are very hungry or have no other focus. Put, when you have nothing to do and your brain is idle, you will involuntarily want to eat even if you are not hungry. So, keep yourself busy, look for something else when you have nothing to do, and naturally eat less.