If food is your stress fix, you’re not alone. Turning to a favorite snack or meal to fill emotional needs, reduce anxiety, and banish stress is a common practice. However, there are ways to limit this.
Also known as emotional eating, stress-eating involves using food as a coping mechanism to help you feel better. Typically, it has nothing to do with physical hunger and everything to do with soothing or suppressing uncomfortable feelings and situations.
If you’re using food as a way to manage stress, you might be wondering why you want to eat when you’re stressed, how you can stop stress eating, and what you can do to reduce stress instead.
Read on to learn why you eat when stress is high and what you can do to change this behavior.
Feeling anxious, worried, and stressed isn’t a great combination, especially when your favorite snack food is nearby. When you eat to satisfy an emotional need, the relief it provides is often temporary.
From a physiological standpoint, stress causes your adrenal glands to release a hormone called cortisol. When this happens, you may notice an increase in appetite and a desire to eat sugary, salty, or fatty foods.
However, this urge to eat isn’t the result of an empty stomach. Instead, it’s your brain telling you to eat so you can prepare for a potentially harmful situation. Typically, the stress subsides, and cortisol levels return to baseline.
Being overwhelmed with daily stressors and not finding ways to manage them can lead to high cortisol levels and overeating. An older
Stress-eating is also associated with uncomfortable emotions.
If you’re experiencing sadness after a sudden loss or frustration after an argument with a loved one, for example, you may be tempted to turn to a pastry, bag of potato chips, or candy bar to manage your emotions instead of dealing with them in healthier ways, such as communication.
Putting an end to stress-eating might seem like a difficult task. That’s why it makes sense to tackle this habit in steps. Here are three ways to stop stress-eating in its tracks.
Know your stressors
Are you aware of your emotional eating triggers? Knowing the stressors that cause you to reach for food is the first step toward stopping stress eating.
This begins with checking in with yourself. Before you head to the kitchen, ask yourself if you’re eating because you’re hungry or if it’s a response to something else.
Each time this happens, identify what you’re responding to and make a note of it. This can help you determine which situations trigger stress eating.
Remove common offenders from the kitchen
Most people can name the foods they reach for when responding to stress. After identifying your stressors, the next step is to remove go-to foods, especially if they’re high in sugar, heavily processed, or high in trans or saturated fat.
This involves removing these foods and snacks from your kitchen, your desk at work, or your car.
When you’re feeling stressed, replace these foods with more nutritious options that can help curb hunger, such as apples and natural peanut butter or carrot sticks and hummus.
Replace stress-eating with other activities
It’s not always possible to avoid food, though. When stress is high and food is nearby, it is helpful to find other ways to take the edge off.
Here are some ideas to try:
- Take a 10- to 15-minute walk.
- Practice 3 to 5 minutes of diaphragmatic breathing (belly breathing).
- Drink a glass of water. You may want to infuse it with your favorite fruit to add flavor.
- Call or FaceTime with a friend or family member.
- Write in a journal.
- Flow into a few stress-busting yoga poses like Standing Forward Bend, Butterfly Pose, Triangle Pose, or Legs-Up-The-Wall Pose.
- Grab an adult coloring book and your favorite crayons or pens and de-stress with creativity.
- Listen to a guided meditation.
- Read a chapter or two in a book or do a crossword puzzle.
- Keep your hands busy with a hobby like knitting, drawing, building, or squeezing a stress ball.
Avoiding stress-eating in the moment requires quick thinking and some go-to replacement behaviors.
A more long-term solution may be to prevent or at least minimize the stress that causes stress eating in the first place. Here are some ways to include stress-reducing activities in your day.
Move your body
Whether you lace up your running shoes and head outdoors or grab a yoga mat and flow into a tension-releasing sequence, moving your body through physical activity is one of the best ways to reduce stress.
Not only does exercise help your body feel better, but it also calms your mind.
According to the
- blood pressure
- heart disease
- obesity
- chronic headaches
- trouble sleeping
Practice mindfulness meditation
The daily practice of mindfulness meditation, relaxation, and deep breathing exercises can help prevent stress before it happens, according to the APA.
Start by carving out 15 minutes each day to devote to one or more of these activities. Each week, add 5 minutes to your routine until you hit 30 minutes.
Seek out social support
Friends, family, coworkers, and other sources of social support can help buffer the adverse effects of stress. If you can’t do an in-person visit, make a phone call, attend an online meet-up, or schedule a FaceTime session.
Consider proactively scheduling events on your calendar. Make a twice-weekly date to walk with a friend. Sign up for a weekly support group or meet up for coffee.
The activity itself isn’t as important as the social connection.
Consider professional help
If lifestyle measures aren’t helping or your stress levels are increasing, it might be time to get professional help.
Make an appointment to speak with your doctor. They can refer you to a mental health professional who can help you create a plan to manage stress.
Turning to food when you experience internal or external stress is common. When you stress eat, however, any relief it provides is often temporary.
Emotional eating can affect your weight and overall health and well-being.
Avoiding stress entirely is not possible. That’s why it’s critical to find healthy ways to deal with daily stressors and anxiety that don’t involve stress eating.
However, if trying new behaviors doesn’t provide stress relief, consider talking with your doctor. They can determine if a referral to a mental health expert may help.
