What happens when you overeat

“I walk by a Starbucks and can smell that pumpkin latte from outside—plus, there are pictures everywhere, which makes it hard to resist,” says Surabhi Bhutani, PhD, assistant professor of nutrition at San Diego State University’s School of Exercise and Nutritional Sciences, who studies how smell and taste perception influence diet and weight gain. Add cooking shows, fast-food signs, and enticing holiday commercials, she says, and you have almost omnipresent triggers for cravings.