What foods do you choose when you're feeling depressed or anxious? Or happy and optimistic?

Christen850

When I’m stressed/anxious, I binge on something heavy, savory, and cheesy like pasta or pizza. It’s comforting because I grew up on those foods. When depressed, I always go out and “treat” myself to a hot chai latte with shot of espresso for a sweet jolt. When I’m happy, I crave something light and sweet like smoothies or fresh fruit.

Idontcareyoupick

I'm an emotional eater. You can look at my diary and compare Sunday 12th to Tuesday 14th on my page. I lean towards chocolate for snacks and other high sugar high calorie to feel better. Working on it though

Kipenzi7

This is great you guys, thank you so much for the responses. I'm figuring out if there's a good way to organize this for data purposes but keep em coming if you're willing!

Kipenzi7

bebeisfit wrote: »

I am an emotional eater, when I'm stressed or depressed I can eat 4 or 5,000 calories in a day. I can make my diary open to the public if you like and give you specific days. And I do log all of those calories. Monday, Nov 13th was a stressful day - I visited my mom who has alzheimers. Saturday the 11th was an in control day. I usually make notes for why I overate. I do better when I have meals already cooked vs eating on the fly. I've almost always been a binger, except when I kept an 85lb loss off for a few years in my late 40's. My bio has a bit more info on that. Feel free to pm me with questions.

That's super helpful, thank you- if it's alright with you I'd like to use those logs as examples in a presentation, with no identifying information of course.

Most of my patients spend a lot of the time in the hospital so it can be hard to give real-life examples of how we emotionally eat in times of stress. They're stressed of course but don't get to choose to overeat because we control everything, but that doesn't mean they don't need concrete examples to get the idea and hear what sounds familiar to them.

Sp1tfire

I used to go for sugar and fast food when I was stressed but I've realized that it doesn't help the situation and sometimes makes me feel worse and jittery. Sometimes I even got sick. Now I try to stick with my usual foods when I am stressed or busy and it helps me work better and stay healthier.