“Stress” is a word that is often overused and sometimes even abused. While it completely depends on context, this emotion we call stress can release hormones that might make us do something we might regret.
Varying amounts of stress can drastically affect your diet, on extreme ends of the spectrum. You’re either too stressed to have an appetite to eat at all, or everything edible within sight is fair game for you.
It is the latter, that will cause you much concern down the road.
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What Causes Stress Eating?
When you go through a period of stress, your nervous system sends messages to your body and stimulates the production of adrenaline, causing you to be wired and casting aside any feelings of hunger.
The other scenario that some people go through when under duress, causes them to develop an insatiable appetite instead.
For these people, their body produces cortisol instead of adrenaline, a hormone that ramps up your appetite and increases your motivation to eat (and eat).
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Dietary Preferences
Stress can not only make you eat more or not at all; it can also dictate what you eat. Studies have been conducted to show that physical or emotional distress can increase the intake of fatty or sugary food.
Food that is high in sugar and fat, like desserts and fried food, appear to have an effect that alleviates stress – thus the term “comfort food”.
The consumption of these comfort foods can set about a very unhealthy ripple effect that will lead to weight gain, loss of sleep and exercise and excess consumption of alcohol.
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De-stress or Distress?
Not eating due to stress or overeating for the sake of it are harmful to our body in their ways, especially where your appearance is concerned.
Not eating due to stress can result in a gaunt figure, sunken cheeks, and a pallid complexion. You’d look like death, for lack of a better description.
To kick the habit of not eating when stressed requires nothing more than a mentality adjustment and realizing the importance of your health and well-being.
The stress eaters though will have their work cut out for them.
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Losing the Excess Baggage
As spoken earlier, a stress eater’s lifestyle can be extremely toxic and unhealthy for her/him.
With all the junk food and alcohol clogging up the digestive system, a ‘reboot’ is in order to purge all forms of toxins that may cause further problems. A One-Day Detox, along with a bowel-regulating agent is in order, for starters.
Once all the toxins have been purged and bowel movement is regulated again, the attention needs to be shifted on all the extra pounds gained from stress eating.
There are a variety of ‘typical’ ways to lose the excess weight, but the running and the sweating and the body odor of the gym might just put you right off.
You might like to opt for the comfort of a treatment bed, and non-invasive procedures like Onda Body Magic or Coolshape, also known as ‘express’ fat-busting treatments that use the cold to disintegrate fat and trim the body, instead of invasive procedures like liposuction.
With your return to svelte form, your stress levels might already be significantly decreased… because if you look good, you feel good as well.
To all stress eaters out there (me included), there is hope for us yet!
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