I'm definitely not trying to make excuses, it is what it is I was just thinking about why I overeat so much.
When I was a child, we were very poor for a while. I remember eating soup beans all the time. I won't touch a bean now. So when my Mom became a nurse we had more money and were able to buy more food. I think this is when I started to pig out. When I was full, I would keep eating for no other reason because I could.
Here I am 15 years later trying to beat my want to binge.

I think there are many causes for overeating, some as simple as food tending to be higher in calorie, yet lower in fiber than it used to be, and the fact that many foods make us hungrier than if we had eaten nothing at all.

David Kessler's book, The End of Overeating changed the way I look at food and overeating. I'm learning to avoid the foods that combine high concentrations of salt, fat, and sugar or starch which quickly turn to sugar.

I spent decades looking for a psychological reason to my obesity, and discovered a physiological one.

I overeat because I enjoy food and have learned that it provides pleasure and comfort. Life can be difficult, and most humans seek little bursts of pleasure to make the day go down better. Depending on what gives us the most "pleasure bang for our buck," we may gravitate to food, sex, alcohol, cigarettes, and/or other substances/activities for our fix. Of course, many of us reach a point where our fix becomes more of a negative than a positive. That's when we decide to make changes.

Freelance

My father's side, ALL of his siblings and both of his parents are over weight

I overeat because growing up I was forced to clean my plate. As I got bigger,so did the portions
Portion control has been my biggest problem since I was little.
Plus I get what I call the "boredom-hungries" where I have nothing to do, so I eat. I also have had issues with control over portions when it came to snacking/boredome-hungries.

Working on it though

Social conditioning. The ads on TV, the fast food on every corners, and the association of food with family and friends. When we associate food with positive emotions, we tend to eat whenever we feel lonely or depressed. The social cue for eating has outweighed the natural cue for eating.

Ditto. This is the main reason I eat. Food is an easily accessible, relatively inexpensive source of pleasure. I'm sure we've all read the standard advice to "do something else" when we get hungry. Usually, the articles that tout this advice list activities like "take a long bath" or "give yourself a pedicure," etc. That does work, but the problem is that even those feel-good activities take some time and effort to do. To take a bath, I have to run the bath, get the bath salts, the towel, etc. To give myself a pedicure, I have to get all the equipment out, arrange it in the living room so that I can watch tv or something while I do it, fill a foot bath with warm water, etc. Food is a quicker and easier form of pleasure. I suppose if I had loads of money, I would go for a facial or get a pedicure or get a massage whenever I wanted to feel good, but again, I don't have the money to do that every time the urge strikes.

I usually overeat when I'm alone, I use it as a comfort. I'm trying to stop, by trying to find other things I can indulge in.

I've never been one for pedicures, massages, facials, or anything to do with salons or spas because of bad experiences with people who work there. What works best for me is getting deeply involved in something, be it a game or a book, where if I'm alone, I see it as an opportunity to do that as oppose to an opportunity to go raid the kitchen.

I think it has a lot to do with being adopted, and the inner self worth and rejection issues that come with that. I've eaten to try and fill a hole. I recall being a young child, maybe 8, and something my mom did made me feel like she was choosing my friend over me. I don't remember what it was, but I remember the feeling very well. I went inside and ate an entire sleeve of chocolate chip cookies while they stayed outside and played. I also remember being a little older and coming home from school to an empty house, and eating what would amount to a large meal as a "snack", then later eat a full dimmer also. I ate to dull the pain, loneliness, and feelings of rejection. Still trying to overcome this today.

I'm so sorry you felt that way, HN.

For years I had all kinds of theories about messed up psychology and even positive stuff, like family showing love w food, etc. And then I discovered that it was all basically solved (sadly I doubt this can ever be 100%, I will never be a person w a naturally healthy relationship w food) by changing my chemistry. Now I really truly believe that it's a chemical food addiction and doesn't have much of a psychological component at all.

I did, though, spend decades in that addiction and I ingraining those behaviors and neural pathways and there is a piece of me that really believes that food can make me feel good (though it almost never does). So in a sense that stuff is psychological.

For me, I think some of it is my stubbornness... but I think it started by me thinking that to grow up, I needed to be bigger, and being bigger was gaining weight.... Then, I realized it doesn't work that way and was the biggest in the class. My mom tried to force me to eat less and exercise more. So I did the opposite....

annnnnnd here we are. Granted, I have been a real live adult for 10 years now and I still have issues with overeating. Sometimes, I forgot that I just ate, sometimes I "feel" hungry, sometimes I am bored. Some times "I earned it"... I am starting to learn that some foods make me more hungry too!

No two answers will be the same

It's a life long learning experience I guess.

That book that kaplods mentioned looks interesting too!

Wow, that is the $64,000.00 question that I wish I knew the answer to! Its partly what others have said (learned habit of being told to eat everything on your plate; really enjoying food, comfort). But a friend of mine who goes to OA is convinced that we (and other people with food addictions) have a psychological element that makes us overeat. I don't know if I agree with that. I have overate as long as I can remember, and I can't think of anything that happened (or is happening) in my life that would cause it. I don't suffer from any depression or anything like that. To me, the answer is that some people just have addictive personalities.

Food has always been my crutch and thats how I became so overweight. I had a horrible childhood growing up....I was bullied in school, my dad passed when I was ten, I never really had any friends, I was a loner and I have been through so much crap since. I got married to a douchebag who abused me both mentally and physically so I depended on food. I got divorced after putting up with it for 15 years....I stayed because I didnt think I could get any better. Here I am years later still single, still fat, still have low self esteem and still bingeing....lately because I lost my job and I have dealt with two deaths over a period of six weeks, both of which have affected me so much as I was close to both. I am also keeping these two things secret from my mom until she gets home from her vacation next week because I want her to have a good time and not ruin her vacation.

Yes! This rings very true to me.