When in danger, the body automatically activates the fight-or-flight response. An adrenaline rush brings blood to the brain, the heart and the muscles taking it away from the digestive system and preparing to run or to fight.
It is believed that this reaction also occurs if the threat or stressor is emotional rather than physical or psychological.
This alert should make people unable to eat or even create a sense of nausea.
But it has been shown that for some people stress is a strong urge to eat and that these actually eat more, not less, in stressful situations. So what's going on?
Those who follow a diet tend to eat more in stressful situations
Nowadays there are many people who follow a diet or check their weight.
This typically means also controlling the type and the amount of food consumed. Those who follow a diet also should ignore hunger signals in order to eat less than they actually want.
In other words, these people impose limitations on their way to eat. Instead people who eat following appetite stimuli, eat without limitations.
Studies have repeatedly shown that in stressful situations people who usually limit themselves in eating tend to eat more and those who do not tend to eat less.
Stress can lead to frantically eat those who usually are following a diet
Dr. Paul Lattimore, an expert on food behaviour of Liverpool John Moores University, offers an explanation of why those who follow a diet eat more in stressful situations.
He asserts that when people follow a diet, commit so much energy in controlling biological processes that only limited resources remain to handle everyday problems.
In stressful situations they lose control and if there is food available they eat it. Moreover: these people are so accustomed to disregard their body signals that ignore or misinterpret the signals of fight-or-flight reaction.
Stress management strategies
A large-scale study conducted in Finland showed that the body mass index (which measures the relationship between weight and height) was higher among those who were eating due to stress and that they tended to eat more food like sausages, burgers, pizza, and chocolate than others.
So if stress reaction in some people is to eat more and this undermines their efforts to constantly check the weight, what can be done to help them?
Dr. Lattimore, who has worked in the prevention of obesity, gives us some advice.
Here’re his tips and tricks: first of all, you must identify which specific situation triggers the urge to overeat, then you should devise alternative ways to combat stress. An ideal strategy would be to go for a walk, because it allows you to think of anything else and burn calories at the same time.
In a nutshell
People who eat when they're hungry and stop when they are satiated are consistent with their own biological signals. These people in stressful situations have no desire to eat.
People who do not take account of its biological signals instead need to identify emotional and psychological stimuli that bring them directly to the refrigerator, and to create diversionary tactics.
These behaviors to stress response underline the importance of approaches to weight control that reduce limitations in eating and rather reinforce a diet plan that provides a greater intake of fruits and vegetables, foods with fewer calories and rich in nutrients.
These foods can reduce the caloric intake if you happen to be in the episodes where you frantically eat.
CHECK your STRESS LEVEL and download this TEST: www.mindtools.com/courses/SMMC/BurnoutSelfTest.xls
Sources:
Greeno CG & Wing RR (1994) Stress-induced eating. Psychological Bulletin, 115: 444-464.
Lattimore P & Caswell N (2004) Differential effects of active and passive stress on food intake in restrained and unrestrained eaters. Appetite: 167-173 42
J. Polivy and Herman CP (1999) Distress and dieting: why do dieters overeat? International Journal of Eating Disorder 25: 153-164
Laitinen J & Sovio U (2002) Stress-related eating and drinking behaviour and body mass index and predictors of this behaviour. Preventive Medicine 34: 39 29-EUFIC-European Food Information Council