Stress and Emotional Eating
by Treena Wynes

We as Westerners are eating the most stressed-out diet on the planet. The foods we choose to soothe our fears, comfort our anxieties, and relax our tensions actually exacerbate the stress we are feeling. After an emotionally-taxing day we tend to reach for sugar or refined carbs to improve our moods. With our hormones continually adapting to all the events we encounter or the tasks demanded of us, the hormonal imbalance at the end of the day will lead us to the package of cookies in our cupboard as soon as we walk in the door. “The psychological experience is as much involved as the biological experience”—(Why Women Need Chocolate, Debra Waterhouse, MPH, RD, 1995).

Sugar boosts the good-mood hormone, serotonin. Serotonin is the hormone that provides us with the feelings of joy, satisfaction, and confidence. When our serotonin levels are low, our brain does what it can to bring them back to normal by sending out messages that we call cravings. (For most women, cravings come in the form of a combination of fat and sugar as fat lifts our level of endorphins, a pain-relieving hormone as powerful as morphine: cravings are usually more intense during their “monthly time.”) We are unable to resist the strong messages from the brain as it is trying to keep hormones at their appropriate levels. Therefore, as good-mood hormones dip we are left with sugar and fat cravings that are near impossible to resist.

The key to ensuring good-mood hormone levels is to maintain stable blood sugar levels. If the brain is supplied with maximum energy throughout the day with “healthy” carbohydrates, proteins, and good fats it will provide us with alertness, creative thinking, and stable moods. Our resiliency to life’s demands depends on eating healthy meals that will sustain us. If our blood sugar levels drop and we “starve” the brain, it will protest with headaches, irritability, and fatigue. When low energy and unclear thinking occur, we lose our self-control and rationale around food, putting us at risk of making some very poor choices to fulfill our needs.

Two top mood sabotagers that we continually use to lift our moods and restore our energy are sugar, and sugar substitutes, and refined starches. Both are usually found in refined processed snacks or sugary store-bought treats such as cookies, cakes, doughnuts, muffins, crackers, cereals, and sweetened drinks and colas. As they provide no nutritional value and contain additives that are addicting, they are not only toxic to our bodies but our moods. How this process works is that within a minute of consuming a diet cola and cookie your body becomes highly stressed trying to neutralize the destructive impact of these “foods.” First your body sends out adrenaline, “the fight or flight” hormone, as it senses your body is being attacked. Then endorphine and serotonin levels go up making you feel good temporarily. Insulin is called onto the scene to deal with the excessive high blood sugar and it also tells your body to store fat. After insulin has completed its job, your energy and mental stamina start to plummet; this brings forward your stress hormone, cortisol, to release emergency sugar stores from the liver so you don’t pass out. As cortisol doesn’t usually feel pleasant it motivates us to get rid of it by, you guessed it, reaching for a sugary snack again. This process can happen two to four times a day putting great strain on our hormones, affecting our moods and increasing our chances of weight-gain.

This vicious emotional eating cycle can be as rapid as the bad-mood foods we chose. Our moods and our emotional dependency on certain foods drive us towards those quick fixes. In order for an intervention to happen, we need to recognize how our habits are contributing to the stress-eating cycle. There are a variety of healthier choices that will provide our bodies and minds with the essential nutrients needed to optimally function. We can eliminate emotional eating from taking over our lives and have the quality of life we are seeking by just feeding our brain and nourishing our body with the right foods.

Treena Wynes, a Registered Social Worker, has worked in the field for 12 years. She is well versed in stress, coping mechanisms, addiction, patterns of behaviour, and intervention strategies. She understands that simply telling people their problematic behaviours are causing havoc in their lives is not going to change their behaviour. She feels educating her clients on the root causes of behaviour and providing healthier replacement strategies is essential in encouraging positive changes. She founded Food4Thought Wellness & Counselling Services with the primary focus on enhancing emotional health through foods and wellness strategies in order to lose weight, improve mental stamina, and balance moods, giving us the quality of life we are seeking. Her e-book, Eating Ourselves Crazy, introduces readers to the Emotional Eating Cycle and how we can decrease our emotional dependency on foods. The book is also now in print. For more information visit www.food4thoughtwellness.ca, email: f4t@live.ca, and call (306) 270-0181 in Saskatoon.