Overeating means bingeing or consuming more than planned. Most of us overeat for a variety of reasons that includes stress, irritation and frustration, not to speak of weekend parties and happy occasions at home.

Compulsive overeating is characterized by uncontrollable eating and consequent weight gain. The more weight gained, the harder one tries to diet which often leads to the next binge. What follows thereafter are feelings of powerlessness, guilt, shame and failure.

Compulsive overeaters usually feel out of control and are aware their eating patterns are abnormal. Like bulimics, compulsive overeaters do recognize they have a problem. Overeating usually starts in early childhood when eating patterns are formed.

Most people who become compulsive eaters are people who never learned the proper way to deal with stressful situations and used food instead as a way of coping. Unlike anorexia and bulimia, there is a high proportion of male overeaters

Over-eating can be effectively remedied through making certain adjustments in eating pattern or lifestyle. Here are five tips on how you can avoid eating too much:

1. Start very meal with a soup or salad. Because the fiber-rich salads and watery soups fill you up quickly making you feel fuller. This can prevent you from eating too much. Eating a first-course salad or soup can reduce overall calorie intake at a meal considerably, as much as 20 percent, studies suggest

2. Avoid any sort of distraction like TV and phone calls while you eat. Distraction can make you lose grip on what you eat and how much. This will end up in over eating

3. Chewing for longer curbs hunger and makes you feel fuller. Studies show that the chewing slowly gives time to the brain to ascertain the hunger levels and send back impulses on going slow with the next course

4. Always make it a point that you put your food in smaller dishes and put your drink in smaller glasses. This results in an optical illusion that you’re getting too much food

5. In people who have glucose intolerance, carbohydrates are readily converted to glucose and the pancreas responds to this shift in blood sugar by secreting an excessive amount of insulin. The result is an increase in blood insulin levels, which has an appetite stimulating effect