Especially if fat loss or weight loss is the goal, choosing food as our means for decompressing often leads to the experience of MORE stress than before. If you’ve learned to rely on the comforting effect of food (which is a very powerful and real thing!), you know that it can often be a major reason that contributes to weight gain in the first place. For example, when I was wronged by a guy in college, my best friend immediately put me in her car and drove me to the nearest gelato shop with lightning speed so that I could vent and be consoled by the cold, creamy, dessert. (And I’m not going to lie either:  I felt better!)

We remember that food has been a reliable mood booster before, so we tend to fall back on it in times of emotional vulnerability. why not check here However, if we continually attempt to relieve our stress using the very thing we aim to avoid or reduce, we feel only a momentary reprieve from stress that soon returns in full and then some. The real problem, our anxiety or feelings about a difficult situation, has not been resolved.  PLUS, we now experience feelings of guilt from our indulgences and a decrease in self esteem from not sticking to our health goals. Ouch!

Fueling Future Cravings

I know, kid. Life is tough.

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Just like a two year old throwing a tantrum, cravings are annoying, persistent, and inevitable. Our response to them, however, is what dictates their intensity and frequency in the future. If we give in and reward our two year old nightmare with the candy she demands, she will learn that throwing a fit leads to candy. In the same way, by stuffing our faces with chocolate and ice cream when we crave them, we learn that we only feel good when we give in to our desires. Over time, this pattern only gets stronger and we soon expect that our cravings will automatically lead us to eat. When we add in the negative emotions of feeling overwhelmed or anxious, we immediately know how to make those feelings go away. Additionally, we are in a weakened position to try to fight these cravings when we are overcome by our emotions in times of stress.

Addiction

Somehow Ben and Jerry’s has manage to create a product possibly even MORE addictive than regular ice cream.

Certain foods (especially those in high in salt, fat, and sugar, like salted caramel gelato…mmm) can affect the same neurological pathways of addiction that drugs do. Turning to food in times of stress quickly establishes routines and habits, innocently enough at first, but we often don’t realize the strength of these habits until we try to change them.

For example, as much as I warn my clients against it now, I have always found it really “relaxing” to plop down on the couch after dinner, watch some TV, and have dessert (I grew up in a household where ice cream was as much of a grocery staple as eggs or milk). Having dessert makes watching TV more enjoyable and fun. This routine started out harmlessly, but grew into something more destructive: as I developed more stress as an adult and experienced more relaxation from the ritual, I started to experience the urge for sweets every time I watched TV on the couch at night.

And guess what? Even when I do indulge in my craving and I finish eating my berries or a couple of squares of dark chocolate (my more current usual suspects for dessert), I immediately want more berries or chocolate.   clarinex in uk In the same way drug addicts develop higher tolerance for their drugs, the urge for eating out of mindless relaxation is not satisfied by just a little bit of eating. And sometimes this means grabbing a second or third bowl of berries. Fine…it’s better than ice cream, right? But this exact same process occurs whether its berries or ice cream or nuts or popcorn. I eat some, but the urge to eat is not satisfied.

And this is when a well-intentioned snack or dessert after dinner can turn into one what the smart folks over at Metabolic Effect refer to as a “continuous meal” (nonstop eating from dinner until bedtime), and this becomes our new compulsive habit that we turn to in order to relieve our stress.

Do you see how this might lead to weight gain?

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So now that we know what won’t work, what can we do to reduce our levels of stress? The following activities tend to actually be effective in reducing stress by promoting our parasympathetic (or “rest and digest”) system: