Did You Ever Wonder Why People Eat Too Much or Too Little?

Everyone of us has our own way of eating, eating much or eating little. But why? Dr. Benjamin F. Miller said: "Habit".

He explained that many fortunate individuals never want to eat more or less than they need to maintain their ideal weight. One of these individuals I can say is my husband. Sometimes, if I put much rice in his plate, he will angrily nagged me and say "are you killing me?" Of course, I feel angry if he nagged me that way, but now I realized, he's right. As I said in my other posts, my husband knows himself the health benefits of plants even though he is not a scientists. He learned from a late old friend who knows "naturally" the characteristics of plants. 

My husband always tell me that overeating (sometimes I am hurt because I sometimes have the "habit" of eating too much) will make you lazy, invite sickness and many other disadvantages that sometimes it is already a pain in the ears to hear like a broken tape :)

Those kind of individuals have appetites that are regulated by their requirements, and they seldom develop bad eating habits. According to Dr. Benjamin F. Miller, the late Dr. Norman Jolliffe, when he was teaching at Columbia University's School of Public Health, coined the term "appestat" for the mechanism that regulates the appetite. People who keep their desirable weights usually have appestats that are set exactly right.

In many people, however, the appestat is easily influenced or conditioned by habit. One of Dr. Benjamin F. Miller's patient experienced that by visiting relatives and eating the huge meals set before her for the sake of politeness increased her appetite. On the other hand, people who do not get enough to eat for some time may develop low appestats and poor appetites.

Emotional factors too can play an important part in overeating and undereating. Those people who often feel lonely and unwanted often eat a great deal because it is one of their few pleasures. Women with small children has the tendency to overeat simply because of boredom, or because nibbling makes them feel calmer and better able to cope with the children. On the other hand, worry and tension or the desire for attention and sympathy can also keep people from eating. His said: "Deep psychological problems naturally call for the help of a specialist. But often I have found that many of my patients who have fallen into bad eating habits can break them by willpower."