What is Stress Eating?
Whether it is a deadline at work, fight with the spouse or the daily demands of work and home life – we’ve all got stress. Many turn to their comfort food during the time of stress to help ease emotions because our ties to food are strong! Don’t worry—you’re not alone!
In some cases, stress causes some people to ignore their hunger cues and refrain from eating for long stretches but for others, it turns them into emotional eaters, who mindlessly munch on their comfort food. But you should stop “eating your feelings” and we are here to tell you why.
Know what exactly happens:
When you are under stress, your body is likely producing higher levels of Cortisol, a stress hormone that makes people crave sweet and salty food—that’s generally not good for the health. If you’re experiencing stress on a regular basis and aren’t finding ways to sort it out, cortisol could be creating these cravings, as well as contributing to other health problems such as weight gain, immunity related troubles and various metabolic syndromes.
Stunning fact about stress eating:
Ever heard that diets aggravate stress eating? Well, you heard it right! It’s never a good idea to follow a highly restrictive diet or deprive yourself of food. As per the research, one of the human being’s strongest basic instincts is “Familiarity”. When you decide to lose weight and start a diet regime, it begins with stress because you feel deprived of the familiar lifestyle. Finally, you will give in and start over indulging in your favorite comfort food.
How to combat stress eating?
The following ideas can help you to cut down emotional eating and develop healthier eating habits, even when you’re stressed.
- Know your stressors: Awareness can be the most powerful aspect of change. Becoming more aware of your stress and the reasons behind it can help you a great deal. So, that you can respond to it within time and drive away the “mindless eating” and unconscious habits.
- Keep a food journal: Another best practice is to maintain a food journal. The trick is to be more aware of why you’re eating when you eat. With this, you may realize you’re eating for the wrong reasons, and can then move onto another approach to deal with your feelings.
- Sweat it out: A good workout helps your body to make chemicals called – endorphins that interact with your brain to calm and relax you. Added advantage is that it’ll make you feel good about yourself.
- Prefer nutritious and filling meals: Have an abundant supply of nutrient-dense food because they not only help improve your health but also battle the tendency to stress eat highly palatable foods.
- Talk it out and use mind processes: You shouldn’t be afraid to discuss your eating habits with your doctor because they may be able to help you identify your stressors and treat them well.
If you just ate a big meal and are still searching for food, please ask yourself – Are you really hungry or are your emotions causing the cravings? The key is to remove the urge to snack on unhealthy foods by staying away from them. So, seek professional help and get pleasure of your favorite food without wrecking your diet.
Remember – “When we lose weight, we lose muscle but when we gain weight, we gain fat!”
Here’s how we can help you with our service offerings:
- Do you know that the success rate of sustainability of weight loss and the ability to follow the appropriate nutrition plan is as low as 1% ? But we can improve that by using scientific mind and body processes as per your need.
- The major reasons for unsustainable weight loss include emotional eating, cravings, stress eating, binge eating and others. We will help you by identifying the accurate reason for that and your program will be customized to your goals and fitness needs.
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