Stress Does Not Cause Stress Eating
You may think that anxiety and stress is the cause for stress eating. Although the foundational cause of stress eating is dieting, something else causes you to even consider dieting! This is the root cause : it's the stress of being unhappy with your body. Fat-phobia and being afraid of gaining weight leads women to chronic under-eating. Restricting food slows your metabolism and makes you feel even worse!
It's the fear of becoming fat causes stress and leads to emotional eating. Unhappiness with your body or your weight leads to dieting. Add to that being hungry, missing the food you love and restricting the amount of food, or certain kinds of food causes more stress, which leads to emotional (or stress) eating. It's a vicious cycle!
Diet Epidemic
There is an epidemic in the US. Women in the U.S. are obsessed with dieting. You can hardly have a conversation without some discussion about weight and restricting food! This is an epidemic of dieting! And dieting actually leads to weight gain! You diet to avoid gaining weight and you end up increasing your weight. The Diet Industry laughs all the way to the bank. Thank you Oprah and Dr. Oz - N O T!!!
Why Do Women Eat From Stress
Women who restrict food are also more likely to be depressed and anxious and that causes them to use food as a treatment for their stressful emotions.
Dieting is a major cause for stress eating according to a study published in Physiology & Behavior. If you tend to gain weight under stress, you’re probably a “restrained” eater under normal circumstances. That means for women who are constantly watching their weight, getting on the scale, avoiding “bad” or “fattening foods”, under stress the rules go out the window. So if you tend to have a diet mindset or are under stress, you’ll choose foods that you decide are off-limits like high-fat and high-sugar treats.
In contrast, it’s the opposite for “unrestrained” eaters, non dieters who are slender and just eat what they want, when they want and are not “watching their weight”. These people tend to eat less food when they’re under stress. It’s because they didn’t have a “bad foods” list- everything was allowed,
Why Some People Don’t Gain Weight
My friend Yolanda, the one who could eat more than a Sumo Wrestler ate cookies and snacks all the time. She never counted how many she ate. She just ate what she wanted. I sat by her and ate “rabbit food”. We were great friends from the time our girls were 3 years old. We played tennis together, exercised together (aerobics and step classes) and walked up hills together. But there was a difference.
Yolanda never gained weight! You can see she’s STILL thin (and her hair is even still red without coloring!!). But after every diet I regained the weight I lost and added a couple of additional pounds. Although I had “bad foods” when I was dieting, I ate everything- just a spoon full of ice-cream, or a cookie. I remember spitting out food unless it tasted good enough for me to “waste calories” eating something I didn’t love. Yes, I was disciplined! But I STILL regained all the weight I lost until I got to the size I am in this photo, and stopped dieting completely.
Dieters Eat From Stress
The study went on to show that twice as many dieters eat from stress in comparison non-dieters. And remember, that only women who are unhappy with their weight or body are dieters!
Why don’t stressed out people have a drink instead? That’s because stress takes away inhibition and makes it much harder to be self disciplined against the thing you are missing! Thinner people probably who don’t drink for stress relief probably allowed themselves to have a drink when they wanted it. So it wasn’t on their “bad food” list. The things that you can restrain yourself from doing when life is good is no longer that easily controllable under stress.
For example, if you’ve been avoiding eating carbs or sugar most days, when something is really stressing you, you go right for those items. It’s even find it hard to stop eating them once you start. No, having one cookie is not enough, you have to finish the box. A dish of ice-cream won’t suffice- you have to eat the entire container!
Can’t Stop Eating
I was in my doctor’s office and chatting with one of the patients. When I told her I taught women how to manage stress eating she said- “That’s ME! I try to stop but I can’t!”
I looked at her and she was an average weight. She told me she used to model and really starved herself. But once she stopped that extreme low caloric eating she gained weight. She was terrified of gaining more and exercised by running 5 miles a day. It did nothing to bring her weight down. She said that now she has a lot of bad foods that she avoids and tries to stop stress eating but she can’t.
I explained to her that if everything was “allowed” the “bad foods” would lose their power over her. She got the point immediately. I explained to her that the foundation for stress eating is a diet mentality that comes from fear of getting fat.
Fear of Getting Fat
Fat Phobia
Our society has a fat phobia. And in some ways you can understand how afraid people are of gaining weight because of the way that fat or even slightly heavier people are treated by our society! There are so many advantage give to people that it's called thin-privilege. They don't even realize how lucky they are. Especially since dieting, no more how much you starve yourself is unlikely to give you a permanent solution to being heavier than you want.
Diet Industry Lies
If the diet industry and doctors told you the truth, they’d tell you that dieting causes eventual weight gain and there is NO DIET, NO LIFESTYLE CHANGE, NO ANYTHING that will make you lose weight and keep it off! Oh sure, having lap band surgery has a higher success rate, but do you know one of the side effects is ANAL LEAKAGE?? They tell you never to wear white pants. And I am NOT kidding! Do you think that’s a good trade for being thin? I sure don’t!
Since the time of the model Twiggy, the fashion has been to be overly thin. Don’t fall for this crap. So many of the women I counsel are normal weight and just living in fear of getting fat! It’s that FEAR that causes a focus and a stress reaction which can actually change your metabolism because of excess cortisol in your body. That creates belly fat.
Diet Cure
The only way to have a diet cure is to finally STOP IT. I know, you want to be thin. But you may also want to be rich, but I'm sure you're not going to go rob a bank and gamble with going to jail for a long time. That's what happens when you are dieting. You have locked yourself in Diet Prison. Your life is circumscribed around a very small locked prison of focusing on food and what you will allow yourself. ENOUGH!
You have the key to get out of this self-imposed prison. The key is accepting your body the way it is NOW. It's finally realizing that the Diet Industry has been lying to you and you are not going to be brainwashed anymore!
Accepting Your Larger Size Body
We have to start accepting ourselves as we are, eating all foods and enjoy them. We should realize that exercise is enjoyable and do it because we WANT to, rather than the victim mentality of “have to exercise”. It’s time to realize that feeling good about ourselves is a human RIGHT.
There are different body types of people all over the planet. Research is now showing that much of time the reason you gain weight is because of genetics – you probably look a lot like your family! For women, it’s so important to realize that we are more important for who we are than what we look like. Sure, it’s nice to be admired, but remember: if you are lucky enough to live a long life you are not going to look like a 30 year old your entire life. If you spend your time and money trying to achieve that look you are probably a pretty shallow person, and not very interesting to be around.
Help Yourself Get Out Of Diet Prison With Stress Relief
You can begin to stop stress eating by working on your self-acceptance, and improving your self-esteem. But until you understand that you MUST stop watching your weight because you can't stand your body, stress eating will be in your future.
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Love yourself NOW- just like your dog does (or if you don’t have a dog, imagine it!) old or young, thin or fat!