If you find yourself eating a whole bag of
chips, drinking cans of soda, or munching down several cookies after an
argument with a family member or a bad day at work, please don’t feel
guilty. Stressful events lead to a rise in stress hormones in the brain,
and in people who are especially sensitive to these hormonal
fluctuations, this can trigger an automatic response in the brain that
leads to stress eating, also known as emotional eating.
This response has been proven experimentally in a 2010 study, where
participants who were under stress ate a lot more snack foods than those
who weren’t. Previously, scientists believed that this mechanism is
activated only in those suffering from overeating, obesity, and other
eating disorders, but this study showed that healthy participants are
just as susceptible to the issue.
Stress can make you crave various unhealthy
snacks, especially those extremely high in sugar, salt, or fat, like
chips, doughnuts, pizza, and chocolate. That said, if you know you’re
susceptible to emotional eating, don’t feel discouraged or hopeless, as
there are ways you can fight this harmful pattern.
Eating healthy while you’re stressed is possible, and here are 5 simple
tips that will help. The same tips should also be able to help those who
have the opposite reaction to stress, where a stressful event makes
them lose their appetite and skip meals.
1. Make time for a proper meal
In a world filled with stress and a
seemingly never-ending to-do list, it's difficult to give yourself a
break and carve out as little as 15-20 minutes to have an uninterrupted
lunch or a family dinner. But in this stressful world, it is also
extremely important to take a break from time to time to clear your mind
of your worries. Let breakfast, lunch, and dinner be the time you spend
entirely on nourishment and self-care.
This means putting your phone away during meals and sitting down to have
breakfast instead of running to the car with coffee in one hand and a
sandwich in the other. It also means closing the laptop or going outside
of the office to have lunch and setting up the table nicely instead of
sitting on the couch in front of the TV at dinner. Visualize what you
would like your meals to look like for them to become a relaxing and
stress-free place, and try to realize that as much and as often as you
can.
2. Have a food schedule and stick to it
Another essential habit to develop is a
food schedule. Building this everyday eating routine will help you
divide food time from any other activities, which should help both those
who eat too often and those who skip meals when they're stressed.
Making a meal schedule, be it imaginary or written, is a great way to
make yourself mindful of how much and how often you eat.
If you've never had a schedule and relied
simply on your intuition and hunger, try adding a mealtime break every
4-5 hours into your daily schedule, or even set up an alarm clock to
remind yourself it's time to eat. With time, your body will get adjusted
to your daily routine and you will no longer need the alarms. Keep in
mind, however, that you need to stick to your schedule every day, and
not only on stressful days, or else this trick will not work and you'll
just fall back to your old harmful eating habits.
3. Eat crabs, protein and fat in every meal
Eating healthy doesn't have to be equal to
counting every calorie. If you are prone to gaining or losing weight,
then sure, go ahead and continue watching your intake irrespective of
the stress in your life, but keep in mind that doing so can make you a
bit more stressed. What's truly essential are your macros - the
proportion of proteins, carbs, and fats you eat every day. Try to
include all three macros in every meal to keep a balanced diet but
without the stress of calorie-counting.
Also, recognize that including protein and fats isn't equal to eating
meat and butter with every meal. Foods that are rich in healthy fats and
can be easily incorporated in many meals are nuts, any kind of nut
butter (with no added sugar), seeds, avocados, and olive oil.
Easy-to-incorporate protein sources include beans, nuts, hummus, eggs,
and plain yogurt.
Lastly, nutrition experts recommend opting for complex carbs instead of
processed ones. Apart from being more beneficial for your overall
health, they are also known to promote serotonin secretion in the brain,
which will be able to help you feel less stressed. Foods that are rich
in complex carbs include fruit, vegetables, oatmeal, brown rice, and
even whole grain bread or cereal.
4. Always be well-stocked in healthy snacks
As we mentioned previously, one of the
defining characteristics of stress eating is indulging in unhealthy
snacks, such as chips, ice cream, cake, cookies, and fast food. To
remedy this problem, simply stop buying all of these unhealthy snacks
and keeping them in your kitchen. Instead, always have plenty of
different healthy snack foods on hand and mix and match them all the
time.
Apart from having plenty of snack foods, such as veggies, fruit, and
nuts at home, also put some mixed nuts, a piece of fruit, or some dark
chocolate in your bag to be able to resist the temptation of vending
machines and cafes at work or while running errands. It's also a great
idea to keep a bottle of water with you at all times - nutrition experts
point out that, in most cases, when you have munchies, you're actually
thirsty, and not hungry.
5. Replace stress eating with a healthy habit
Since stress eating or loss of appetite is
your response to stress, meaning that it's your way of unknowingly
coping with stress, introducing a new stress-reducing habit that will
replace it is a great thing to do. So, instead of landing on the couch
after a stressful day at work and finishing off an entire box of
cookies, do a different activity that you enjoy and that you know
relaxes you.
This can be taking a bath, taking the dog out on a walk, engaging in a
hobby, or simply going on a walk on your own. You can also call a friend
or family member, engage in some mindfulness meditation, or exercise.
The possibilities are endless, you just need to find something that will
sound more tempting to you personally than eating those cookies or
crisps, or falling into a cycle of self-rumination.
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