Help! I Can’t Stop Eating!

When Laura leaves home before work she doesn't just check that she's got her make-up, mobile and house keys. She also makes sure she's got a banana and chocolate bar for what she calls ‘hunger emergencies'.

She would probably eat something every waking hour of every day. Sometimes she really panics that she might get peckish and not be able to find somewhere to buy food. On a normal day her breakfast cornflakes are followed by a bagel at half nine, then she'll have a cereal bar an hour later. She almost always has a smoothie round eleven, and that's all before lunch.

Remarkably she is still a neat size 12 despite her eating patterns, but that doesn't mean she's happy with her eating habits. She's constantly thinking about where her next meal is coming from, and within days of starting her new job, her colleagues were calling her the Cookie Monster. It was funny at first but now she hates it.

The reason for Laura's unstoppable appetite lies in her past. Like so many of us she's being on a number and this can have an effect on eating patterns. When you restrict what you eat, not only does it affect your brain - deprivation makes you obsess about food - it messes up your bodies hunger hormones too.

Research in this field is still infancy, but one hormone in particular, ghrelin, appears to hold the key to out of control appetites like Laura's. In non-dieters ghrelin is produced when the body is hungry, making you feel hungry and prompting your stomach to start growling, and is switched off once you start eating.

However, recent research conducted at the University of Washington in Seattle has shown diets screw up this straight forward mechanism. Ghrelin levels often stay high throughout the day in those who have been on low calorie diets. It explains why feeling hungry - or thinking you feel hungry - all the time is a chief concern for many young women today.

But ghrelin isn't the only hormone to blame. Cortisol plays its part too. Cortisol and adrenalin are produced when were stressed, which, let's face it, is almost constantly. In the past, these two hormones prepared the body for flight or fight, but modern stresses like, say, a looming deadline, doesn't give you the chance for a scrap with your boss or a sprint round the office. That means those hormones are left to disperse on their own. And while adrenaline levels plummet pretty quickly, Cortisol tends to linger, leaving you with its evil side effect - a craving for carb-based foods like pasta and bread.

After looking at Laura's diet, you could suggest she's highly stressed, because she eats almost nothing but low fat, high carb foods. Bagels and smoothies might sound healthy, but they send blood sugar levels soaring, followed by an almost immediate crash, so it's no wonder Laura can't go 60 mins before snacking again.

Another fellow non-stop eater, Rachel, also thinks her history of dieting is behind her out of control habits. She's a size eight but staying like that hasn't been easy. She has tried most weight loss plans out there - Slim-Fast, Atkins, GI. The one that affected her the most was the ‘six meals a day' plan. It was meant to rev up her metabolism and help her slim, hunger free, but instead it got her into the habit of eating her three normal meals, plus three extra ones to help keep her going. She now often has two breakfasts, a double lunch with a gap in between, supper and a light night snack like cheese on toast.

The only way Rachel can eat like this and stay so slim is by practically living in the gym. She tried cutting down on the extra meals, but she's so used to them now, she would get ravenous and insanely grumpy if she misses one out.
So what was wrong with Rachel trying the six-a-day plan? It's a sound nutritional theory that ‘grazing' on six small meals a day instead of three large ones is good for us. But in practise, what people tend to do is still have their three large meals, then three more large snacks in between, and this can be habit forming, as Rachel's found to her cost.

Then what's the answer for those of us who've confused our hormones and got into bad eating habits through our past attempts to lose weight? Can Laura, Rachel and the rest of us with insatiable appetites ever go more than five minutes without making a dash for a vending machine?
No problem. Here are the new halt hunger rules.

Combat ghrelin with sleep

The pharmaceutical industry is racing to come up with a drug that suppresses ghrelin, the hormone that makes us hungry, but research has shown that getting enough kip is a quick way to lower your levels. Sleep affects the function of many of our body's hormones, including ghrelin. In fact, one study showed women who get less than five hours sleep a night are 32% more likely to gain weight exactly for that reason.

Eat fish to boost leptin

Another hunger hormone, leptin, controls how much food you eat and affects the metabolism, helping your body decide whether that Crispy Crème will go on your thighs or be burnt off working home. Keeping leptin levels low is crucial and the food that's so far been shown to have an effect is fish. Researchers studying two African tribes, one of which frequently ate fish and one who didn't, found the fish eaters had leptin levels in tribes that mainly ate vegetables. And if you don't like fish, fish oil supplements may work just as well.

Control Cortisol

While there may not be much we could do to cancel out things make us stressed, we can learn food - free ways to deal with them. Help your body produce less Cortisol - which makes us crave carbs when under pressure - by incorporating relaxation techniques into your day. You don't have to become a master at meditation, just try to find ten minu8ets every day to focus on breathing slowly and deeply.