Are you trapped inthe vicious cycle ofstress and over-eating?By Sandra Roycroft-Davis, founder of Thinking Slimmer

YOU’VE probably heard the expression “comfort eating” – we’ve all done it at some point in our lives. Usually when we’re feeling stressed and need a temporary feel-good boost to our morale. Somehow a bar of chocolate, a bag of doughnuts or three chocolate eclairs seem to make the world go away for a few minutes and bring comfort.

It’s what experts call emotional eating. The problem is that bingeing, excessive snacking and sugar boosts don’t address the emotional problems which can be the underlying cause of the stress.

Too easily we can become trapped in a vicious cycle where stress makes us believe we are hungry, so we overeat then feel ashamed and guilty. This creates more stress and – guess what? – we convince ourselves the answer is to eat again.

Stress affects the way you choose healthy foods, how you digest those foods and how you absorb nutrients such as vitamins. A poor diet contributes to stress, which, in turn, contributes to a poor diet. For a number of people, food eventually becomes a mechanism for coping with stress.

How can stress and anxiety have such a powerful effect on our eating habits? The answer lies in the complex physical and mental processes that control how we feel, what we do about it and the way our body then reacts.

The scientific evidence on the link between stress and over-eating makes fascinating reading. I’ve drawn on research from America, Britain, Australia and the Far East to produce this factsheet so you will have a better understanding of the mind/body connection that is such a major influence on our lives.

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Recognise this?

Then you’re a stress eater!

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scientific factsabout stressand the wayit affects us

Here’s seven scientifically-proven facts that may surprise you (although some of them might sound rather familiar):

1 Women are considerably more vulnerable to stress-induced eating than men.

2 When we’re under stress, we snack more but cut down on meals of meat, fish, fruit and veg.

3 Under stress, women tend to turn to food while men drink and smoke more.

4 When women are stressed they find it harder to say No to food than men do.

5 Stress makes our minds tell our bodies to crave high sugar and high fat food.

6 In teenagers, unhealthy eating is linked to low self-esteem and the stress of growing up.

7 Stress can affect our sleep patterns, and that alters the body’s production of the hormones that control our appetite.

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When you feel anxious or worried, you turn to food and sadly usually overeat at every meal to compensate. Another thing emotional eaters tend to do is skip meals during the day and eat only at dinner times, often eating far more than they need. If you turn to food when you’re sad, you have an argument with someone close to you or you have had a bad day at work then you’re an emotional eater

Under stress, you deliberately cut down on food, often banning yourself from eating specific foods. You might say no more bread, no more pasta, no more cakes. This in itself only serves to create more stress! Restrictive eaters are always dieting, frequently cutting out entire food groups and depriving themselves of vital nutrients. Medical science has proved that by doing this you are setting yourself up for bingeing, stress-related eating and life-long weight fluctuations.

What kind ofSTRESS EATER

are you?

An emotional eater

A restrictive eater

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Is stress sending you off the dial?

Most people understand that the part of our mind we call the unconscious is a real powerhouse that controls up to 90 per cent of the things we do. For example, it makes us breathe in and out, it tells our hearts to beat and it runs our immune systems that keep us healthy.

All of this happens automatically, without us even having to think about it. Importantly, the unconscious also dictates our moods and our mental wellbeing, often by releasing hormones into our blood stream and our nervous system.

Some of these make us feel good and some of them make us feel bad. This is where science has made huge advances in the past few years in our understanding of the effects hormones have on us and what we can do to influence how we feel.

When we’re under stress, the body responds by shooting into our systems powerful doses of adrenaline and cortisol.

Adrenaline revs us up by increasing the heart rate, waking up the nervous system and preparing the muscles for action. It’s known as “fight or flight” because back in caveman days that was the choice humans had when faced by something that wanted to eat them!

Adrenaline is also a neuro-transmitter, which means it helps convey nerve impulses to vital organs. One thing it does is stimulate the pituitary gland to secrete cortisol.

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Cortisol is an important hormone in small doses because among other things it controls the release of insulin to maintain a healthy blood sugar level. At times of “healthy” stress – for example when we hear a strange noise in the dark – it boosts our blood pressure, gives us a quick boost of energy and lowers our sensitivity to pain.

However, most of us lead high-stress lives – get the children off to school, go to work, rush round the shops, more work, dash home, cook the dinner, struggle to get the family to bed – so our cortisol level doesn’t get a chance to return to normal.

This constant stress state can have dramatic effects. In the short term, we can’t think straight, our blood pressure shoots up and our muscles lose some of their power. In the long term bone density can decrease, our blood sugar goes dangerously out of balance, our immunity to disease is lowered and it takes longer for wounds to heal.

Cortisol is also known to encourage the body to store fat around the abdomen, where it can cause more health problems than fat elsewhere in the body, including diabetes, heart issues and strokes.

Stress hormones use up significant amounts of our reserves of vitamin C and B and the minerals magnesium and zinc. So when we’re under stress we need to make sure we eat even more healthily.

So there’s another problem: Stress makes us want to eat unhealthy things like sugar, chocolate and fat not meat and two veg. So our vitamin and mineral deficiency just gets worse.

Watch out forcortisol tummy

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Real hunger is good. It’s your body telling you that you need to take on more fuel,so always eat (not over-eat) when you feel genuine hunger. But how can you tell when you’re hunger is real or when it’s just an emotional reaction to stress or anxiety?

Medical scientists have discovered these facts.

Emotional hunger comes on suddenly – you see a box of cakes in the supermarket and you suddenly “need” to eat them. Real physical hunger creeps up on you gradually as you actively burn off calories.

If you need to satisfy your hunger right now and can’t wait a second longer, then it’s emotional. Genuine hunger can wait – “gosh, I’m feeling peckish, I’ll have to make a sandwich when I’ve finished walking the dog.”

Craving for cream cakes or chocolate pudding and nothing else will do? That’s emotional hunger. When you’re genuinely hungry, lots of things will appeal to you – “mmm, a jacket potato would be nice, or there’s some home-made soup in the fridge, or maybe I fancy beans on toast.”

Right, you’ve had a prawn cocktail starter, roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, black forest gateau, coffee and after eight mints and 10 minutes later you could murder a cheeseburger with chips? That’s definitely emotional hunger, which doesn’t recognise the full signal. Genuine hunger goes away when you’re full.

Finally, how do you feel when you eat all the Easter eggs while the kids are at school? Guilty and ashamed, I bet. You might feel powerless, as if food is in control and you’re not. When you’ve worked up a genuine appetite after a long walk, or a stint of gardening, eating enough to satisfy your hunger doesn’t make you feel bad about yourself.

Emotional hunger

genuine hungerVERSUS

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Extensive medical research has proved that lack of sleep has a direct link to stress, overeating and putting on weight. In clinical tests, people deprived of sleep or whose sleep pattern was disturbed suddenly craved sugary foods that would given them a rapid energy boost – such as chocolate or biscuits.

The cause of this is the balance in the body of two hormones that regulate normal feelings of hunger and fullness. One is ghrelin, which stimulates your appetite, and the other is leptin, which suppresses it.

Researchers found that when you’re short on sleep your ghrelin level goes up, which means you want more food than normal. At the same time, your level of leptin goes down and however much you eat you still feel hungry because your brain’s not getting the message that you’re full.

A study of students revising for their exams showed that the more they went short of sleep, the more they found themselves skipping proper meals. Their mind was telling their body to go for sugary snacks instead.

Lack of sleep makesmakes you crave

sweet things

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Three simple waysto fight backagainst stress

There are three ways you can start to fight back against stress:

Make sure you find time each day to relax. I know our lives are hectic and we’re always under pressure, but it is vital to find some “me time” when you can shut off and ease the load.

Get some exercise every day. A workout, a swim, a brisk walk, some gardening – they all release mood boosters like dopamine and endorphins and work wonders. Physical action = mental relaxation.

Mix with positive people. If you’ve got friends or colleagues whose demands on you are triggering your stress response - life’s “emotional vampires” – then surround yourself with other people who are upbeat and optimistic.

Best of all start listening to a Chillpod!

Thinking Slimmer’s relaxation download has been clinically provento work. You can get one free by visiting

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All written material Copyright © ThinkingSlimmer Ltd 2015.No reproduction without prior written permission. All rights reserved.