Stress Eating

marnet12

Just wanted to share some information a client gave to me about stress eating. She has a master's degree in biology and has studied just about everything there is to study about how the human body works.

She explained to me that waaaay back in our evolution our biggest stressor was lack of food. That feeling of stress made us seek out and consume all the food we could find. Consuming the food eased the stress and we felt better. So basically stress was a signal to eat.

Fast forward to now and we have a lot of stressors which have nothing to do with food, but our bodies are sending us signals that we are starving. When we eat, we feel better.

Now throw in the fight or flight response. Our bodies can't tell the difference if we are being chased by a lion or are pissed off at our boss so it throws out all these hormomes designed to give us the energy/stamina etc to fight or run. Only most of us don't punch our boss in the nose no matter how badly we want to. Those hormones now have nothing to do but build up and cause us stress. Oops, must be starving. Time to eat.

The good news is, that once we recognize this, we can do other things to ease the stress response. Exercise, meditate, breathe, get a massage (had to throw in that plug), go shopping (if you can afford it), make love! Lots of options here!

gehlerc

Thanks for posting this! It helps to understand. Now, if I can make myself engage my brain (to remember this and be reasonable) when those stress-eating urges hit me....