What happens when you overeat

It makes it hard for us to hold back,” says Michael Lowe, PhD, a psychology professor at Drexel University who coined the term hedonic hunger to distinguish it from homeostatic hunger, which stems from your body’s need for energy (i.e. that rumbling in your stomach when you haven’t eaten in hours). “When we eat delicious food, we get a surge of the neurotransmitter dopamine, which is part of the reward system in our brain,” Lowe says.