Germans have a word to describe stress eating - kummerspeck. Its literal translation is "grief bacon." In the USA, there is a saying that bacon makes everything better.
Strictly speaking, stress is not a person, a situation, or an event. It's your unique perception of and reaction to a person, situation, or event. Just like beauty, stress is in the eye of the beholder. It's a symptom of negative feelings, such as anxiety or anger -feelings that stem from your perception of the stressor rather than the stressor itself. Left unchecked, chronic stress can do more than deplete your zest for life. It can actually increase belly fat, and it's associated with health problems such as type 2 diabetes and heart disease, an outcome that leads to even more stress.
To understand why you feel you must eat that cupcake the moment stress hits, it's essential to learn the fundamentals of stress biology. It's complex, but here's what you need to know.
More than seventy-five years ago endocrinologist Hans Selye, recognizing the link between stress and illness, broke the stress response into three stages.
In the alarm stage, which occurs when you're scared or under threat, your body enters fight-or-flight mode. Hardwired into your brain to help you identify a threat to your survival, the fight-or-flight response is your body's home alarm system. The area of the brain that controls the release of cortisol is called the HPA (hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis). The instant it identifies danger, your body's sympathetic nervous system releases stress hormones, such as adrenaline and cortisol. These hormones take your body to a hyperarousal, so you're ready to fight the threat or run away.
When the body is in fight-or-flight mode, its key systems are amped up. Breathing quickens, which helps disperse more oxygen throughout body. The heart beats faster, which increases the flow of blood to carry more oxygen to muscles. Blood sugar increases, so your body has the fuel it needs to fight or run. This is the kind of hyperarousal that allows a mother to lift a car to save her child.
After the immediate threat has passed, in the resistance stage your body tries to adapt to the continued stress. If the stress passes, you can start to rebuild your defences.
In the short term, fight-or-flight responses can save your life. But if the stress never shuts off — if stress hormones stay elevated — your body moves into the exhaustion stage. Continued stress depletes your body, suppressing your immune defences and increasing your risk for disease.
Today, screaming kids, a ringing phone, or a beeping work pager can set off that primitive, powerful, automatic response designed to save your life.
Fat and sugar cravings
The stress-weight gain connection centres on cortisol, which mobilizes the body's storage of fat and sugar to fight or flee and directs you to search for calorie-dense foods —specifically, foods stuffed with dietary fat and sugar. Previous studies have found clear associations between altered stress responses and obesity.
Stress can inflate your middle. Research associates depression, anxiety, and tension — all markers of stress — with the accumulation of visceral fat. While you tend to eat more when you're stressed, what you eat is also a factor. Typically people under stress reach for what we call comfort foods and what researchers call reward foods: anything salty, sweet, or creamy.
Once ingested, fat- and sugar-filled foods seem to have a feedback effect that inhibits activity in the parts of the brain that produce and process stress and related emotions. These foods really are "comfort" foods in that they seem to counteract stress — and this may contribute to people's stress-induced craving for those foods.
Another significant factor is the stress hormone response. Cortisol in particular seems to influence fat accumulation around the abdominal area.
Higher-than normal cortisol levels have been linked to weight gain even in the absence of a stressful event. In a small University of Michigan study, researchers boosted cortisol levels In people by directly stimulating their pituitary glands (no stress-inducing tasks involved) to see if it affected their eating behavior. It did; the participants ate more high-fat, sweet, and salty snacks. In essence, if a higher-than-normal amount of cortisol is pumping through your body, you're likely to be experiencing craving. No wonder it feels so difficult to say no to comfort foods!
Unknowingly, many of us live in a constant fight-or-flight state. We rarely go back into a state of relaxation and rest unless we intentionally do so. The better you get at managing fight-or-flight responses and stress in general, the better you'll protect your health and your well-being from its ravages and the smarter your eating decisions will become.
Of course, overeating isn't the only stress-related behavior that can add pounds. Stressed people also lose sleep, exercise less, and drink more alcohol, all of which can contribute to excess weight.
Steps to counter stress snacking
When stress affects someone's appetite and waistline, the individual can forestall further weight gain by ridding the refrigerator and cupboards of high-fat, sugary foods. Keeping those "comfort foods" handy is just inviting trouble.
Here are some other suggestions for countering stress:
Meditation. Countless studies show that meditation reduces stress, although much of the research has focused on high blood pressure and heart disease. Meditation may also help people become more mindful of food choices. With practice, a person may be able to pay better attention to the impulse to grab a fat- and sugar-loaded comfort food and inhibit the impulse.
Exercise. Intense exercise increases cortisol levels temporarily, but low-intensity exercise seems to reduce them. University of California researchers reported that exercise — and this was vigorous exercise — may blunt some of the negative effects of stress. Some activities, such as yoga and tai chi, have elements of both exercise and meditation.
Social support. Friends, family, and other sources of social support seem to have a buffering effect on the stress that people experience. For example, research suggests that people working in stressful situations, like hospital emergency departments, have better mental health if they have adequate social support. But even people who live and work in situations where the stakes aren't as high need help from time to time from friends and family.
Strictly speaking, stress is not a person, a situation, or an event. It's your unique perception of and reaction to a person, situation, or event. Just like beauty, stress is in the eye of the beholder. It's a symptom of negative feelings, such as anxiety or anger -feelings that stem from your perception of the stressor rather than the stressor itself. Left unchecked, chronic stress can do more than deplete your zest for life. It can actually increase belly fat, and it's associated with health problems such as type 2 diabetes and heart disease, an outcome that leads to even more stress.
To understand why you feel you must eat that cupcake the moment stress hits, it's essential to learn the fundamentals of stress biology. It's complex, but here's what you need to know.
More than seventy-five years ago endocrinologist Hans Selye, recognizing the link between stress and illness, broke the stress response into three stages.
In the alarm stage, which occurs when you're scared or under threat, your body enters fight-or-flight mode. Hardwired into your brain to help you identify a threat to your survival, the fight-or-flight response is your body's home alarm system. The area of the brain that controls the release of cortisol is called the HPA (hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis). The instant it identifies danger, your body's sympathetic nervous system releases stress hormones, such as adrenaline and cortisol. These hormones take your body to a hyperarousal, so you're ready to fight the threat or run away.
When the body is in fight-or-flight mode, its key systems are amped up. Breathing quickens, which helps disperse more oxygen throughout body. The heart beats faster, which increases the flow of blood to carry more oxygen to muscles. Blood sugar increases, so your body has the fuel it needs to fight or run. This is the kind of hyperarousal that allows a mother to lift a car to save her child.
After the immediate threat has passed, in the resistance stage your body tries to adapt to the continued stress. If the stress passes, you can start to rebuild your defences.
In the short term, fight-or-flight responses can save your life. But if the stress never shuts off — if stress hormones stay elevated — your body moves into the exhaustion stage. Continued stress depletes your body, suppressing your immune defences and increasing your risk for disease.
Today, screaming kids, a ringing phone, or a beeping work pager can set off that primitive, powerful, automatic response designed to save your life.
Fat and sugar cravings
Stress can inflate your middle. Research associates depression, anxiety, and tension — all markers of stress — with the accumulation of visceral fat. While you tend to eat more when you're stressed, what you eat is also a factor. Typically people under stress reach for what we call comfort foods and what researchers call reward foods: anything salty, sweet, or creamy.
Once ingested, fat- and sugar-filled foods seem to have a feedback effect that inhibits activity in the parts of the brain that produce and process stress and related emotions. These foods really are "comfort" foods in that they seem to counteract stress — and this may contribute to people's stress-induced craving for those foods.
Another significant factor is the stress hormone response. Cortisol in particular seems to influence fat accumulation around the abdominal area.
Higher-than normal cortisol levels have been linked to weight gain even in the absence of a stressful event. In a small University of Michigan study, researchers boosted cortisol levels In people by directly stimulating their pituitary glands (no stress-inducing tasks involved) to see if it affected their eating behavior. It did; the participants ate more high-fat, sweet, and salty snacks. In essence, if a higher-than-normal amount of cortisol is pumping through your body, you're likely to be experiencing craving. No wonder it feels so difficult to say no to comfort foods!
Unknowingly, many of us live in a constant fight-or-flight state. We rarely go back into a state of relaxation and rest unless we intentionally do so. The better you get at managing fight-or-flight responses and stress in general, the better you'll protect your health and your well-being from its ravages and the smarter your eating decisions will become.
Of course, overeating isn't the only stress-related behavior that can add pounds. Stressed people also lose sleep, exercise less, and drink more alcohol, all of which can contribute to excess weight.
Steps to counter stress snacking
When stress affects someone's appetite and waistline, the individual can forestall further weight gain by ridding the refrigerator and cupboards of high-fat, sugary foods. Keeping those "comfort foods" handy is just inviting trouble.
Meditation. Countless studies show that meditation reduces stress, although much of the research has focused on high blood pressure and heart disease. Meditation may also help people become more mindful of food choices. With practice, a person may be able to pay better attention to the impulse to grab a fat- and sugar-loaded comfort food and inhibit the impulse.
Exercise. Intense exercise increases cortisol levels temporarily, but low-intensity exercise seems to reduce them. University of California researchers reported that exercise — and this was vigorous exercise — may blunt some of the negative effects of stress. Some activities, such as yoga and tai chi, have elements of both exercise and meditation.
Social support. Friends, family, and other sources of social support seem to have a buffering effect on the stress that people experience. For example, research suggests that people working in stressful situations, like hospital emergency departments, have better mental health if they have adequate social support. But even people who live and work in situations where the stakes aren't as high need help from time to time from friends and family.
