Is food your answer to stress? If so, you are not alone. Turning to a favorite snack or meal to fill emotional needs, reduce anxiety, and banish stress is a common practice. Also known as “emotional eating”, stress-eating involves using food as a coping mechanism to help you feel better. Typically, it has nothing to do with physical hunger and everything to do with soothing or suppressing uncomfortable feelings and situations.
Do you ever wonder how you can stop stress-eating? What can you do to reduce stress instead of eating? This may seem obvious but stress-eating is also associated with uncomfortable emotions. In simple language, stress causes your adrenal glands to release a hormone called cortisol. And when this happens, you may notice an increase in appetite and a desire to eat sugary, salty, or fatty foods. This urge to eat isn’t the result of an empty stomach. Instead, it’s your brain telling you to eat so you can prepare for a potentially harmful situation. Being bombarded with daily stressors and not finding ways to manage them can lead to high cortisol levels and overeating. To show you what I mean, during this pandemic, according to the American Psychological Association (APA), nearly 8 out of 10 Americans feel that the current coronavirus pandemic is a significant source of stress. And 7 out of 10 Americans report higher stress levels in general since the pandemic started. And guess what? Many of us put on the Covid-15 during this time as we “stress-ate” our way through quarantine.
So, how can we stop eating this way? Let’s break it down into a few steps.
Know your stressors. Knowing the stressors that cause you to reach for food is the first step toward stopping stress-eating. Don’t be afraid to talk to yourself outloud! Go ahead and have a conversation by asking yourself if you’re eating because you’re hungry or if it’s a response to something else.
Remove the common offenders that are in your kitchen (pantry or fridge or freezer). Many reach for sweets or salty snacks and one idea I can offer is to replace these foods with more nutritious options that can help curb hunger when you’re feeling stressed.
Replace stress eating with other activities. Take a walk, practice breathing exercises, call a friend, write in a journal, read a chapter in a book, do a puzzle, or listen to a guided meditation.
Turning to food when you experience internal or external stress is common. But, when you stress-eat, you will notice that any relief it provides is often temporary. Truthfully, avoiding stress altogether is impossible and that’s why it’s critical to find healthy ways to deal with daily stressors and anxiety that don’t involve stress eating. If you have tried to implement some of the new behaviors that I am referring to, and it hasn’t helped, don’t do it alone! Consider talking to someone- I am here! Just send me an email to rachel@livehealthynyc.com