Why We Overeat: Food as an Antidepressant for an Exhausted Brain

Overeating is rarely about weak willpower. In the logic of the method, it is the way an overloaded, weakened brain tries to treat its own swings of state. Dr. Saulitis puts it plainly: a person goes through psychogenic, social and physiological dips — and "treats" them with the most available remedy, sugar.

Food as an antidepressant

When emotional dips occur — "depressive episodes" in a broad everyday sense — the brain looks for a fast way to feel relief. Fast carbohydrates become that way.

"These depressive episodes, which he treats with an antidepressant called fructose, or fast carbs, sugars — that's all."

So food serves not a nutritional but a regulatory function: it briefly dampens discomfort. The trouble is that the effect is short, while the pattern locks in for a long time.

How a stubborn addiction forms

Repeated "self-medication" with sugar takes root at the level of the nervous system. The doctor speaks of a "stubborn addiction" and of neuroplasticity that now works against the person: the brain shifts into a reactive mode.

"This is already a stubborn addiction, and neuroplasticity is now in such a reactive mode."

In reactive mode the nervous system is weakened and depleted. Hence irritability, trouble holding attention, general instability. The brain has grown used to a quick "fix" and reacts not to life itself but to the absence of its usual stimulus.

An excess of brain and tiredness of life

A separate idea from the doctor concerns an "excess of brain." When a person lives rightly, they don't tire of life — just as they don't tire of breathing. Overeating arises where this natural flow is broken and the brain seeks an external chemical crutch.

"If a person does everything right, he lives; and if he lives, he doesn't get tired of life, like breathing."

The doctor honestly shares an everyday example with a fizzy stimulant on an empty stomach: the "chemistry sat me down" — what promised energy did the opposite. It shows how a quick stimulant betrays expectations.

Why prohibitions don't work

The method suggests not breaking the habit by force. If you ban everything abruptly, in the doctor's words, "you get an even worse situation." Instead of a ban — an intervention: alongside the usual behavior, something new is gradually introduced through the person's own interests.

"You must not forbid him anything, break all of it — we just start doing an intervention in parallel."

The person keeps eating and living as before, but something else gradually grows beside it, and over time "ours takes over" while the addiction falls away on its own. It is a process that takes time — not days, but years of recalibrating the nervous system.

Practice

A checklist to "stop the autopilot of overeating," strictly within the method's logic:

1. Name the true cause. Before reaching for sweets, ask: am I hungry, or am I dampening an emotional dip? Is this food medicine or nourishment?
2. Don't ban abruptly. Don't strip away the habit by force — that causes a backlash. Leave the familiar in place.
3. Add something in parallel. Alongside the habitual, introduce something new that catches your interests and gives "true" emotions without sugar.
4. Restore the flow of life. Bring back the state where you "don't tire of life, like breathing" — this lowers the need for a chemical crutch.
5. Give it time. Accept that recalibration happens gradually, the way a plant "gratefully gathers strength" from sun and rain.

The method's key idea: first the level of mental energy and health is restored — and only then does the craving for food-as-medicine lose its grip.