Gut Reaction: Overeating Can Impair Body Function

The holiday season is pretty much over. But is your body over the holiday season? For many people, indulging during these food-filled celebrations can set the stage for routine overeating.

The problem, some doctors and researchers say, is that overeating causes biological changes in the body that can lead to more food cravings and cause your stomach to send mixed signals about when it's actually full. As the years go by, those holiday pounds add up.
(..)
A Vicious Cycle

Overeating "sets your body chemistry sort of into red alert," says Dr. Sasha Stiles, a family physician who specializes in obesity at Tufts Medical Center. "The kinds of hormone and metabolic processes that normally will try to metabolize food will go into overdrive to make sure they get rid of this huge food load," Stiles explains.

This means that much of what you eat will be stored as fat rather than converted into healthy byproducts.

Excess food can trigger an unfortunate cycle: The pancreas produces extra insulin to process the sugar load and remove it from the bloodstream. It doesn't stop producing insulin until the brain senses that blood sugar levels are safe. But by the time the brain stops insulin production, often too much sugar is removed. Low blood sugar can make you feel tired, dizzy, nauseous, even depressed — a condition often remedied by eating more sugar and more carbohydrates.

This feeling of low blood sugar sends many people after more carbohydrates, says Stiles, and they go for high-sugar foods to bring their blood sugar back up to normal and make them feel better.