Emotional eating, or as many of us know it all too well, stress eating, refers to going for food when we’ve been stressed, anxious or just plain in bad feelings. Today, I look forward to going through the contest called “Stress Eating” hosted by @khursheedanwar in #HealthySteemCommunity. This contest gives a good platform to have a rethink on why we tend to eat foods that we know is not healthy for us whenever we are stressed, the effect of such actions on our health, and how we can change such attitude.
Emotional eating or stress eating is when due to stress, anxiety or sadness, one eating rather than owing to hunger. Feeling stressed leads to the production of the cortisol hormone and may lead to craving for energy dense, High-fructose or fatty foods. Consuming these “comfort food” may just offer a temporary relief to the feelings, but results to over consuming, guilty feelings and other bad things. Stress eating and understanding better reactions which are healthier than that includes learning about various approaches, besides eating, which are healthy and can be used to deal with strong emotions: doing exercises and practicing mindfulness.
Eating can have many disastrous effects on both our mental and physical health when we are stressed. Overeating high caloric, unhealthy foods is one of the most common impacts resulting in weight gain, obesity, and the associated health problems of diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart disease.
It also dials out the natural body's hunger and fullness cues, so it's harder over time to differentiate between emotional and physical hunger. This behavior often leads to creating a cycle of emotional distress, feeling guilty or regretting what you’ve eaten can make you stressed and anxious even more.
Stress eating can destroy someone’s self esteem and blunt to unhealthy food relationship. Food is the vehicle to fill the void that exists when there are no other ways to nurture or cope with stress. And over time, this can mean that you cycle into more serious problems, like eating disorders, or chronic health conditions. Being aware of these effects is important and learning how to deal with stress in a healthier manner is important to overall well being.
Alhamdulillah, no, I never ever have wanted to stress eat. I don’t let challenging and stressful times control my emotions by the fact that during that time I will have ways of doing so – like prayer, doing something positive, or talking to my family and friends. To me, just turning to Allah and then experiencing patience brings me peace and strength when things get rough.
Where as before I could rely on food to control me, now I choose distractions like spending time with family, reading or going for a walk. These are habits that keep me grounded and prevent me from going down unhealthy gut, these habits. Praise to Allah, I love that this mentality has helped me keep a healthy relationship with food and cope with stress in ways that I can.