Have you ever heard of the term "stress-eating?" How about "emotional eating?" Well it turns out it is far more than just a catchy phrase or an excuse for why you ate that chocolate cake at 11pm the other night. A new study is revealing that stress has a direct link to not only how much you eat but what you are craving as well. Stress is directly related to overconsumption of foods that are not so great for us. So, if you want to stop binge eating, it seems like the first area you need to address is the stress.
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Address Your Stress: The Secret You Need To Stop Binge Eating
The NY Post shares how "a new study confirms that those who find themselves frequently overwhelmed can develop a dependency on bad-for-you comfort foods." And let's be honest, while comfort foods are oh-so-delicious, they are typically not the best for your health.
A study published in the Journal Neuron, focuses on how stress overrides some neurological components. Specifically, the ones that make us see junk food as a rare treat. Instead, stress makes us crave those naughty foods everyday, and eating those treat foods everyday leads to obesity.
Herbert Herzog of the Garvan Institute of Medical Research shared some astounding facts from his research. He found that "chronic stress, combined with a high-carb diet, can drive more food intake." Not just that, but it also creates a "preference for sweet, highly palatable food." It is a vicious cycle. You start stressing, which prompts your brain to want sugary junk food. You go and eat it, your brain rewards you for the action, you continue to eat until you gain weight and develop health complications.
Stress is so powerful that it "can override a natural brain response that diminishes the pleasure gained from eating." What that means is that your brain can end up on a loop of continuous reward for eating.
Studying Mice To See How Stress Causes Overconsumption
Scientists studied mice to help learn how stress causes overconsumption. The NY Post shares, "In a study with mice, the lateral habernula 'was active' and prevented overconsumption of high-fat diets in a control state." However, once the mice were chronically stressed, that changed.
Under stress that part of the mice's brains remained silent. Without the interference, their reward signals stayed active on a constant basis, "encouraging feeding for pleasure, no longer responding to satiety regulatory signals." Not only did the study prove that stress causes over consumption but it also proved that stress makes you gain weight.
The findings proved that "the mice on a high-fat diet gained twice as much weight as mice on the same diet that were not stressed." So if you want to stop binge eating, the secret doesn't lie in new diets or fads. Instead, it lies in controlling your stress levels.
"Stress not only activates more reward when eating but specifically drives a craving for sweet, palatable food." Unfortunately those delicious sweet foods are not the best for us. Help you brain by managing your stress. Talk a walk outside, get some fresh air, feed your body nutritious foods, take a break from the screens, meditate. The options for helping lower your cortisol levels are endless.
Just remember, address your stress! The secret to you being able to stop binge eating lies in you properly managing your stress.
