Archive for December 27th, 2009

Stress Levels and Eating

Your levels of stress and stress hormones, the most notable and widely known of these “stress hormones” or chemicals being one called cortisol, definitely play a role in your appetite, there’s no doubt about that. However, research on how it impacts the appetite of different individuals varies.

While one person, like myself, will resort to eating more of the wrong food choices as a sort of comfort to help ward stress off (oh how wrong I am though), I choose to stuff my face a lot more during the day, and because I’m so preoccupied about other things other than what I’m eating or how my health is, I am much more likely to make the most wrong food choices I can.

Case in point, I had Five Guys Burgers and Fries one day for lunch when I was uber stressed ot the max.  While I may go to the end of the spectrum where my caloric intake goes through the roof when I’m stressed out, some people are the polar opposite, and they lose their appetite, or they almost “forget” to eat.  I know people like this too. On of my good girlfriends is like this. You can tell when she’s mega stressed because she drops pant sizes in a matter of a weeks.  It just depends on your body and how you personally handle being under a lot of stress.

While stress and grief or heartbreak might rank closely on the emotions scale, however, I am completely opposite with my eating patterns with these two emotions.  When I am either grieving or I’m heartbroken (this hasn’t happened in a while, thanks to me being married to a great guy now), or maybe even heartbroken about a family member or friend who has really let me down, I tend to subconsciously starve myself.

I have experienced this a few times, and it’s very unusual for me, because my appetite is usually extremely healthy, in fact I almost always want to eat everything but the kitchen table most of the time.  However, when I’m grieving or have had a big disappointment, I tend to lose my appetite, big time.  You have to figure out what emotions lead you to eat and not eat, and try to harness them better and figure out why they do this to you to be able to master your eating habits.  I think if you can do this, you can more artfully manipulate your body and your health.