The “Good Crap”: Why You Eat Too Much of It & 5 Strategies to Fight These Calorie Bombs

You know that feeling: one salty, crunchy crisp turns into 100 salty, crunchy crisps, and suddenly you’re licking the salt off your fingers wondering, “What the hell is wrong with me?”

The truth is, it’s completely normal to feel like you can’t stop overeating certain processed foods. Today’s hyper-palatable foods have created a modern food crisis, one that can leave us feeling out of control, unhealthy, and constantly wanting more.

It’s happened to all of us.

It starts with one handful, then a bowl, and a few furious crunches later, we find ourselves staring at the bottom of a gigantic bag of crisps.

“How did this happen?” “Already?!” we ask ourselves, slightly dazed.

“What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I stop?”

That’s usually the moment we turn the packet around, check the calories, and realise what we’ve just done.

But before diving headfirst into a full-blown festival of self-loathing, read this.

Processed foods are scientifically designed to be irresistible and easy to eat in large quantities. If you find it difficult to stop, the crisps and other industrial delicacies are basically doing exactly what they were designed to do.

(Someone at Lay’s probably got promoted at some point based purely on how many pickle-flavoured crisps I used to eat.)

That’s why, in this article, we’re going to look at exactly how junk food is designed to trigger behaviours that can start looking suspiciously like those of a professional crisp-bag-opening addict.

Better yet, I’ll give you five practical strategies to examine your relationship with processed foods and start taking back control of overeating.

Stop looking for some deep personal flaw behind your crisp frenzy. Certain foods have literally been developed to make us overeat.

If you overeat, it’s not because there’s something wrong with you or your willpower.

Here’s the truth: there’s an entire industry dedicated to creating hyper-palatable foods, foods so tasty that they’re almost impossible to resist.

Your body and your brain are reacting exactly the way they’re supposed to. It can be incredibly difficult to stop eating these foods!

Which is pretty much the complete opposite of “normal” foods like asparagus, cauliflower, basmati rice, or baked salmon fillets.

(How many times have you heard someone say: “I ate so much broccoli that I had to sit down and loosen my belt before I exploded. I just couldn’t stop myself!” I’m willing to bet that has never happened to you... except maybe for a few clever ones trying to prove that broccoli can somehow replace meat as a protein source.)

I’m talking about processed foods.

These foods are altered from their original whole-food form in order to change their flavour, texture, or shelf life.

And very often, they’re modified to hit as many pleasure centres as possible, from your brain to your mouth and all the way down to your stomach.

They’re highly desirable, immediately rewarding, fun to eat, and incredibly easy to overconsume quickly, often at a relatively low cost.

Processed foods can also look and feel very different from their whole-food equivalents depending on how heavily processed they are.

Because if you feel out of control around certain foods, you’re not crazy.

Even people who swear by healthy, unprocessed foods can sometimes feel completely out of control around certain foods.

Even if we care about nutrition and genuinely want to take care of ourselves, some foods can make us feel… a little possessed.

You know what I mean?

You reach into the freezer for one spoonful of ice cream and suddenly you’re digging out the caramel, then the nuts, then the brownie chunks, and then… your spoon hits the bottom.

You know this conversation:

You: “Pass me one fry please, just one, promise.”

Your friend: “Just one, yeah? After that, the vulture can go hunt somewhere else.”

You: “Yeah yeah, don’t worry!”

2 minutes later:

You: “…okay but seriously, pass me one more. Promise, last one…”

And just like that, you end up eating a quarter of your friend’s plate.

Even with the best intentions, the pull of certain foods can be so strong that it leaves us feeling powerless.

If you’ve ever felt this way, you’re not alone, and there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with the way you function.

1. Marketing convinces us that processed foods are “healthy.”

Processed foods are presented in brightly coloured packaging, with cartoon characters, celebrity endorsements, and powerful words designed to trigger all sorts of positive associations.

Some brands use buzzwords such as organic, vegan, and gluten-free on their labels to create the illusion, or halo, of health around their products.

Companies offer organic versions of boxed macaroni and cheese, gluten-free versions of iced pastries, and vegan versions of biscuits.

You’ll see crisps “made with avocado oil,” or sugary cereals “made with flaxseed.”

The nutritional value of these foods isn’t necessarily anything special, but adding trendy nutrition buzzwords and fashionable ingredients can make us perceive them as healthier.

Marketers also choose words that connect more broadly with self-care.

Have you ever noticed how many processed-food slogans sound something like this?

“Take a break.”

“Take some time for yourself.”

“You deserve it.”

Words like “break” and “deserve” distract us from our physical sensations and tap directly into our emotions, into that part of us that just wants to feel understood, supported, comforted, or maybe simply escape for a moment.

Health buzzwords and emotional appeals can make us perceive a food as “good for us.” It starts to feel like a sensible, caring choice to put it in our shopping trolley, and then in our mouths.

And if a food feels “healthy,” or if we tell ourselves that “we deserve it,” we don’t feel quite as bad about eating as much of it as we want.

Variety makes us even hungrier.

Choice excites us.

Think about an all-you-can-eat Asian buffet:

“Ooh! Tempura. They’ve got unlimited dim sum and gyozas too. Roast pork, you say? Yes sir, right this way please. Rhaaaa, that sweet and sour sauce with fried pork! They’re going to regret letting me through the front door.”

Before you know it, there’s a leaning tower of food, healthy or not, sitting in front of you.

Or think about going to the cinema and seeing those counters packed with all the “good stuff”: sweets, biscuits, ice cream, crisps, enough combinations to give you a stomach ache and an intergalactic case of diarrhoea.

All in one bag!

The pleasure never seems to end because there’s always another flavour or texture to keep things interesting.

When we have a lot of variety, we tend to have a lot more appetite.

It’s much harder to overeat one single food with one single flavour, like apples.

How many apples can you realistically eat before, frankly, you start feeling a bit sick of them?

Reduce the variety and you also reduce some of the distraction that can pull you away from your body’s built-in self-regulation signals.

When we’re not completely dazzled and overstimulated by choice, we’re more likely to slow down, eat more consciously, and ultimately eat less.

Multiple flavours at once are irresistible.

If there’s a party happening in your mouth, you can pretty much guarantee that at least two of these three guests are there:

Sugar, fat, and salt.

These three flavours, the sweetness of sugar, the rich mouthfeel of fat, and the sharp punch of salt, are some of our favourites.

I never hear my clients say they love eating spoonfuls of sugar or salt, or that they feel like drinking a bottle of oil.

But when you combine these flavours, they become incredibly tasty and much harder to resist.

This is sometimes referred to as stimulus stacking: combining two or more highly rewarding flavours to create a hyper-palatable food.

For example:

The satisfying combination of fat and salt, found in crisps, fries, nachos, and so on.

The comforting combination of fat and sugar, found in baked goods, ice cream, biscuits, chocolate, and so on.

And then there’s the irresistible combination of all three.

May the gods have mercy on you if you stumble across a proper fat, salt, and sugar combo: fries with andalouse sauce, mayo or ketchup, for example.

Or a salted caramel brownie.

Food manufacturers know this very well: when it comes to encouraging people to overeat, two flavours are better than one.

Large portions make us think we’re getting a “good deal.”

People often confuse the quantity of food with its value.

We’re taught to save money wherever we can and not to waste food. We’re taught that getting more for less is a good thing.

But here’s the problem.

When you have the choice between a small juice for two euros and a soft drink with unlimited refills for the same price, the soft drink can feel like much better value for money.

(The small juice isn’t necessarily a great choice either, but it’s still better than an unlimited sugary drink.)

What we usually don’t include in that equation, either because we don’t know about it or because we simply choose to ignore it, is something I like to call the “health tax.”

And that’s where the real problem begins.

The “health tax” is the price you pay for regularly eating nutrient-poor, highly processed foods that are high in fat, sugar and/or salt.

If you eat them regularly over time, you may eventually pay the price through your health.

When companies use cheap, lower-quality ingredients, they can sell larger quantities without significantly increasing the price. That’s one of the reasons this “good crap,” as we’ve been calling it, can seem so attractively cheap.

Sure, you may save money in the short term.

But over the long term, you may end up paying that health tax through an increased risk of problems such as high blood pressure, obesity, heart disease, or diabetes.

5 strategies to help you find your way back to a healthier and more peaceful relationship with food.

It’s one thing to understand in theory why certain foods are so easy to overeat, but it’s even more important to discover for yourself how food processing, certain ingredient combinations, marketing, and even how easily accessible a food is can affect you and your food choices.

Let me tell you, it’s pretty fascinating to understand how the big companies operate.

1. Get curious and learn more about the foods you eat.

Processed foods are designed to be easy to eat.

For a food to be “easy to eat,” it needs to be:

• Easy to break down, meaning less chewing,

• Low in volume, meaning it doesn’t take up much physical space,

• Really tasty.

So:

Less chewing + low volume + great taste = more food.

Why?

Chewing takes time. The more we have to chew something, the longer it takes us to eat it, which gives our satiety signals, including hormones, more time to kick in and regulate our hunger normally.

That feeling of “fullness” matters a lot too.

When we eat, our stomach expands. That feeling of pressure is one of the ways our body recognises that we’ve had enough.

Processed foods can provide a lot of calories without taking up much space, which means we can eat quite a large amount before realising that we’ve overdone it.

Experiment #1: Pay attention while you chew.

Yep, you understood correctly.

I want you to count your chews.

Quick note: don’t do this every day for the rest of your life, you little smartasses. I’m not trying to turn you into the kind of person nobody wants to sit next to at the breakfast table.

Just try it as an experiment to learn something about how you eat different foods.

First, eat a whole food, a vegetable, fruit, whole grain, lean protein, whatever you like, and count how many times you chew each bite.

How long does it take you to eat a full serving of that food?

How full do you feel afterwards?

Do you still want to eat more?

Then, the next time you eat something processed, count how many times you chew each bite.

How long does it take you to eat that serving of sweets, crisps, or biscuits?

How full do you feel afterwards?

Do you want more?

Make a few comparisons and notice the differences.

Compare how long it takes you to eat each food, how full you feel afterwards, and how strongly you want to keep eating.

How could you use that information to make better food choices in the future?

2. Pay attention to the messages you receive about food.

Food manufacturers use creative marketing strategies to make processed foods seem healthy.

And even if you know they aren’t particularly healthy, they have plenty of other ways to convince you to buy them.

Here’s an example:

Have you ever noticed that the “healthy” produce section is often one of the first areas you walk through in a supermarket?

Supermarkets have found that when they place the healthier foods first, people may feel more comfortable buying processed foods afterwards.

Probably because once your trolley is already filled with spinach, broccoli, and apples, grabbing some ice cream, biscuits, and crisps before heading to the checkout doesn’t feel quite as bad.

I’ll give you a few seconds to let that sink in:

Some supermarkets we all visit several times a month are deliberately designed in ways that can make us feel better about buying foods that may work against our health goals.

The good news?

Simply becoming aware of these tricks can help us work around them.

Experiment #2: Assess your pantry.

For this experiment, you’re going to look at the foods you have at home and the messages you’ve received about them.

Quick note: remember, this is an awareness exercise.

You’re not doing this to judge yourself or feel ashamed about the food choices you’ve made.

Look at your pantry with the curiosity of a child.

Step 1: Look for “health halo” foods.

These are foods that appear healthy but may not actually be particularly nutritious.

If you find some, ask yourself:

Why did I choose this?

Was it the language used to describe it?

Was it the packaging?

Was there a trendy “superfood” ingredient?

Was it labelled organic, gluten-free, sugar-free, Paleo, or something similar?

Step 2: Read the nutritional information.

Once you’ve identified your “health halo” foods, take a closer look.

See whether they’re actually that different from other products in the same category that aren’t marketed as healthy.

Step 3: Count how many varieties of junk food you have.

If you like ice cream, how many flavours do you have?

If you look through your cupboards, are there biscuits, popcorn, sweets, or crisps?

Without judging yourself, count the total variety of junk food currently in your home.

Generally speaking, the more options you have, the easier it can be to overeat.

The takeaway?

You’ll become more aware of the types of marketing you’re particularly sensitive to, and you can use that information to make more informed food choices.

You’ll also get a better idea of which treats you actually enjoy the most.

By reducing the variety of those foods in your home, you can reduce both the opportunities and the desire to overeat.

3. Look for patterns.

We often use food for reasons other than physical hunger.

For example, if we feel sad, we might reach for chocolate for comfort.

Temporarily, we feel better.

The next time we feel sad, we remember the temporary relief that chocolate gave us.

So we repeat the ritual.

If we keep repeating this cycle, we can eventually develop a habit of reaching for chocolate every time we feel down.

At that point, we don’t even think about it anymore.

It’s simply a habit.

Habits are powerful, for better or worse.

They can work for us or against us.

Fortunately, we have some control over them.

It just takes a little time and an understanding of how habits are formed.

Experiment #3: Put the science of habits to work.

If you want to break the habit of overeating, you can use the trigger, behaviour, and reward loop to your advantage.

Here’s how.

Step 1: Identify your triggers.

A trigger could be:

A feeling: We might eat more when we’re stressed, lonely, or bored. Food fills the gap.

A time of day: We always have a biscuit at 11 a.m. or a soft drink at 3 p.m. It’s simply become part of the routine.

A social setting: “Hey, everyone’s having beer and chicken wings, so I might as well join happy hour!”

A place: For some reason, a dark cinema or our parents’ kitchen might instantly make us want to snack.

A thought pattern: Thinking “I deserve this” or “life is too hard to be chewing sweet potatoes” might send us straight towards the takeaway counter.

Whenever you find yourself eating even though you’re not physically hungry, try to identify the trigger by asking yourself:

What am I feeling?

What time is it?

Who am I with?

Where am I?

What am I thinking?

If you can’t remember afterwards, keep a journal and start looking for patterns in your decisions.

And remember: overeating usually becomes problematic when it’s chronic, when those trousers feel suspiciously tight after most meals, or when episodes of overeating are particularly intense, such as during a binge.

So don’t worry too much about isolated episodes of overeating, such as the occasional cheat meal or even cheat day.

To distinguish overeating from binge eating, keep in mind that binge eating tends to feel disconnected, uncontrollable, difficult to stop, and is often accompanied by feelings of shame and guilt.

If, while observing your eating habits, you realise that you may be dealing with compulsive overeating or binge-eating behaviour, seeking help from a doctor, therapist, or another qualified professional who can help you navigate your relationship with food is probably the best option.

Step 2: Find a new behaviour to respond to your triggers.

Once you’ve identified your triggers, try pairing them with new behaviours.

Those behaviours should support your health goals and, importantly, make you feel good.

If the new behaviour isn’t rewarding in some way, you probably won’t repeat it, which means it won’t become a habit.

To find the “right” replacement behaviour, it helps to understand that when we eat, we’re often trying to satisfy some kind of need.

So when you’re thinking about new behaviours, find something that meets that same need, whether it’s spending time in nature, connecting with another person, releasing physical tension, or simply giving yourself a break from your thoughts.

For example, I had a client whose trigger was speaking to her former boss.

Whenever she interacted with him, she felt angry, and aggressively crunching through a bag of crisps temporarily made her feel better.

Eventually, she replaced the crisps with either a punching-bag session or walking up and down the stairs.

Both activities helped release the tension, but unlike the crisps, they actually supported her goals.

Another example: a friend once told me he constantly ate biscuits simply because they were always visible around the house.

He gradually replaced the biscuits with fruit, and it worked extremely well.

Step 3: Practise.

Every time a trigger appears that normally pushes you towards food, try replacing eating with a healthier behaviour that makes you feel good.

Repeat that loop until the new behaviour starts becoming just as automatic as reaching for the Nutella jar.

4. Slow down.

If nothing else works and the idea of removing your favourite treats completely terrifies you, do this:

Slow down.

Allow yourself to eat what you want, but eat slowly and deliberately.

Slowing down allows us to actually enjoy our food, which can help us feel satisfied while eating less.

It also gives the physical sensations of fullness and satiety signals time to catch up, rather than arriving after you’ve already eaten far more than you intended.

Binge eating can feel stressful and uncontrollable.

By slowing down, we give ourselves an opportunity to calm down and regain at least part of that control.

5. Focus your attention on what really matters.

It’s important to understand that whether you’re trying to change your diet or change almost anything else in your life, the principle is largely the same:

The motivation needs to come from something internal that genuinely matters to you.

If your motivation comes entirely from external sources, for example a friend or partner telling you that you should exercise, or wanting somebody else’s physique, then that motivation doesn’t really belong to you.

People change.

They can leave our lives.

Their bodies can change.

And boom, suddenly the motivation disappears.

Of course, external motivation can sometimes work, but in general it tends to be less powerful than motivation that comes from within.

Internal motivation is also used in approaches designed to change behaviours linked to addiction, so don’t worry, you’re not the first person experimenting with this idea.

To identify your own internal motivation, you can ask yourself questions like:

How do I feel?

What genuinely matters to me?

Am I currently moving towards that?

How can I contribute something valuable to other people?

How can I give something back to the world?

And so on.

A little bonus before we go even deeper, because unfortunately, all good things must come to an end.

Not all “healthy” habits are created equal when it comes to their physiological effect on the body’s stress response.

According to the American Psychological Association, some of the most effective stress-relieving activities include: exercising or playing sport, reading, listening to music, praying or attending a religious service, spending time with friends or family, getting a massage, walking outside, meditating, doing yoga, and taking part in a creative hobby.

Some of the least effective stress-relieving activities include: gambling, shopping, smoking, eating, drinking alcohol, playing video games, browsing the internet, and watching television or films for more than two hours.

Even though we may use the second list as “stress relief” because those activities make us feel good in the short term, they don’t necessarily reduce stress very effectively.

That’s because many of these habits rely heavily on dopamine to give us a quick hit of pleasure. Dopamine is immediately rewarding, but because it is also involved in arousal and motivation, these activities don’t always help calm the stress response in the same way.

By contrast, the first list tends to involve mechanisms associated with relaxation, connection, and well-being, including systems involving serotonin, GABA, and oxytocin.

Even if these activities don’t always feel as “exciting” at first as the second list, they can ultimately be more rewarding and more effective for managing stress over the long term.

Think about that next time you’re stressed, or if we somehow end up in another lockdown that lasts until 2057.

One last thing, even though I’ve already mentioned it: if you’re dealing with a situation that feels too difficult to handle on your own, don’t hesitate to ask for help. That’s a sign of courage, not weakness.

Take care of yourself, keep working towards your goals, and keep looking for the best version of yourself.

If you’re interested in personal training, don’t hesitate to contact me to start, or continue, progressing towards your goal. I invite you to book a discovery session with me.

Booking is quick and easy, but if you’d rather not use the booking system, you can always contact me directly on 0489 55 11 11 or send me an email at coachben@firefly-zone.com.

I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.

And finally, if you enjoyed this article and would like to support me, share it. It might help someone close to you too.