The Natural Eating Cycle — and How Sugar Can Disrupt It by Joan Kent, PhD

The Natural Eating Cycle – and How Sugar Can Disrupt It
By Joan Kent, PhD

The Natural Eating Cycle is simple and straightforward: We feel hungry. We eat. The hunger stops. We stop eating and lose interest in food.

We could visualize those 4 steps as a circle because they form a continual, ongoing process. Eating that natural way is primal and elemental.

Babies are expert at it, although it obviously takes a parent or caretaker to feed them. The last step is one they have down cold, though. Have you ever tried to feed a baby who’s not hungry anymore? Good luck.

That’s how it’s supposed to be.

Yet the natural eating cycle can go wrong, and sugar is one reason that can happen. More about sugar’s effects on eating patterns later.

Unnatural eating patterns include restriction (dieting, fasting); bingeing; purging (self-induced vomiting, abuse of laxatives, excessive exercise); irregular meal timing (skipping meals, grazing all day); extremely rapid eating; or eating a lot of food when not hungry.

I once read 2 different articles, each describing a disturbed eating cycle. According to the first cycle, an event disturbs our equilibrium. We eat. We feel fat and resolve to diet.

In the other eating cycle, we diet. We feel deprived. We binge.

No doubt some people have experienced one or both of those cycles. What if we put the two patterns together and look at interactions among the steps?
1. An event disturbs our equilibrium.
2. We eat.
3. We feel fat and resolve to diet.
4. We diet.
5. We feel deprived.
6. We binge.

The 6 steps seem reasonable in sequence, and form a pattern to which you might relate. Based on clinical experience, though, I say there’s more to it. Here are a few ways it might go.

Scenario A
We go all the way through steps 1-6. After we binge in Step 6, we then circle back to Step 3 – we feel fat and resolve to diet. From there, we continue through the lower part of the list, and cycle through Steps 3-6, possibly over and over.

Scenario B
We’ve binged, presumably after Steps 1-5. That takes us back to Step 1 at the top of the list: bingeing is the event that disturbs our equilibrium, so we eat in response to it. We might then continue to cycle through the remaining Steps 3-6, possibly over and over.

Scenario C
This one involves only Steps 1-3: the event that disturbs us, eating, feeling fat and resolving to diet. But in this scenario, resolving to diet – just anticipating the stress of dieting and deprivation – is enough to disturb our equilibrium, so we eat. Someone could stay stuck in Steps 1-3 in this way for quite some time.

How can sugar make any or all of these 3 scenarios more likely?

We might feel deprived in Step 5 because we gave up sugar to diet and are now experiencing sugar cravings that make us binge.

We might feel stressed at the anticipation of dieting in Step 3 because it will mean giving up sugar, with all the discomforts of withdrawal.

If we eat sugar regularly, we might find ourselves at Step 1 more frequently, feeling more disturbed by a greater number of events. The neurochemical effects of sugar could simply make it difficult for some people to maintain equilibrium. Almost any stage of sugar addiction, including withdrawal, can make our behavior (eating behaviors and others) more impulsive.

The natural eating cycle is a delicate balance. It’s always subject to disruption, but eating sugar can disrupt it a lot more.

Bonus Tip
If you experience out-of-control eating patterns, the answer could be nutrition coaching from an expert in sugar addiction. I’m dedicated to helping you conquer sugar addiction so you can transform your health, feel better, look better, lose the mood swings, and gain control.

Access your free copy of the “3 Biggest Mistakes People Make When Trying To Quit Sugar” on the home page and visit Services>Coaching to schedule your Food Breakthrough Session. No cost, no obligation, just help for you.