How to Stop Stress Eating
You had a stressful day at work. Nothing went the way it was supposed to. You’re finally home when you see an email. You ignore it only to be met with another problem at home. You feel the tension rising and you instinctively reach for that bag of chips in the cabinet. Crunching away, you finally start to feel better after stress-eating to your way to the bottom of the bag. Maybe you respond differently. You spent the day at the hospital with a loved one only to come home exhausted and frustrated from the day. You know you should eat something, but you just can’t muster it, so you skip dinner completely. What is happening? How are both of these scenarios linked? It could be stress eating. There is no shortage of stress, especially in recent years. People are finding all sorts of ways to cope. According to the American Psychological Association, twenty-seven percent of adults say they eat to manage stress while thirty percent of adults report skipping a meal due to stress. With so many people struggling with their eating habits when they feel stressed, we must understand what it is and what we can do about it. What is stress eating? Upon first look, it may not make sense to pair skipping meals with overeating. But the two are connected more than you think. Stress eating, also referred to as emotional eating, is a pattern of eating as a coping mechanism to make you feel better, often in stressful situations. When people use food to suppress negative emotions such as sadness, loneliness, stress, or fatigue, it can be considered stress-eating. How does skipping meals fit in? When you experience stress, the body has a surge of adrenaline that triggers the fight-or-flight response. This hormonal response can [...]
