You don’t crave celery when you’re stressed?!? Oh wait… me either.
Last Wednesday I came rushing into my office after a long day, with less than an hour before I’d have to leave for another appointment. I threw down all the bags I was carrying, booted up my computer and sat down to catch my breath. After teaching 3 group sessions, I hadn’t yet had lunch and noticed for the first time my ravenously growing stomach. At that exact moment, I spied the Panera box my co-worker had on her desk. Moments later, I was gobbling down a cinnamon crunch bagel and thinking to myself “Boy, I sure do get why people say they eat worse when they’re busy! You just don’t have time to get something healthy some days!”
AHEM. I realized a few seconds later, as I glanced over at the bags I rushed in with, that I had a yogurt, celery sticks and laughing cow, and a Clementine all left in my lunch bag. I knew those were there, but nonetheless, had defaulted to grabbing the bagel. This reaction made me wonder: how much of our busy day eating choices have to do with lack of time to find or prepare healthy food, and how much should more accurately be contributed to the emotional state that our frenzied lifestyle puts us in?
For me, this moment was an insight. My knee jerk reaction to grab the bagel had nothing to do with the fact that I didn’t have TIME to get something healthy – although I had not had my usual lunch hour during the day, I had plenty of time the night before to pack a lunch box FULL of healthy choices and just as much time to reach over and crunch on some celery and LC. My inclination to grab the sugar-y, carb-y choice was clearly a response to my pent-up tension from a day (a week!) that had hit me hard on the stress-o-meter.
There seems to be an epidemic lately of stressed out, busy people. One of my clients’ most common obstacles to their weight loss goals are their “busy lifestyle.” My initial reaction to that is to look at their day-to-day schedule and figure out where exercise can fit in (one less hour of TV? wake up a smidge earlier?) and to develop strategies for cooking fast and healthy (hello, steamfresh veggies!) or finding healthy take out (thank you, Jared.) While these strategies are critical and they address the symptoms of a busy lifestyle, as I sat there wolfing down a bagel that did nothing for me but send me into a sugar coma that stretched well into dinner hour, I realized that the roots of our poor habits/busy lifestyle go way deeper than just “not enough time” to eat healthy or exercise.
It’s well documented that under stress, our bodies start pumping out 2 hormones: adrenaline and cortisol. The body’s reaction to cortisol: GIMMEFOODNOW kind of hunger. This was a great reaction to have in the days when stress meant running from a saber toothed tiger (thanks, Cavemen ancestors for establishing our metabolisms), but not so helpful today when running away from our stress usually involves vegging out in front of the TV with Simon Cowell or having your butt glued to the office chair for hours at a time. Chronic, low-grade stress (the kind of every day stuff we all deal with) can create chronic levels of cortisol.
The result? Your bodies’ craving for quick, concentrated energy. Here’s a hint: it’s not celery sticks and laughing cow.
But wait… there’s more! (That wasn’t enough? REPEAT: Thanks cavemen ancestors.) Not only does cortisol rev up your craving for Panera bagels, but it also makes your body more efficient at storing fat – a protective mechanism when times of stress might also be times of famine. No longer helpful when famine is practically unheard of in most of our lives – in fact, most of us have access to cheap, plentiful, high calorie food at any hour of the day!
Couple these physical reactions with our emotional response to stress – a desire to disconnect from the pain that focusing on our stressors create – and you have what is basically the perfect storm for not-so-healthy choices and weight loss efforts impeded. How to navigate from these treacherous seas?
Use the symptom-treating healthy eating strategies: packing healthy lunches/snacks the night before so you have plenty of good choices on hand, loading up on steamer bag veggies, lean proteins, bagged salads – whatever it takes to quickly throw together a healthy meal, plug exercise sessions into your calendar and treat them with the importance of a doctor’s appointment.
Another strategy: Move. It’s called fight or flight for a reason – sometimes a little flight can go a long way to can go a long way to clear your head and level out your stress hormones.
But, lastly go a little deeper. Recognize when you’re grabbing choices that don’t support your weight loss efforts that it may really be more about the comfort of that food than the “too busy” – I find a heaping dose of honesty with ourselves goes a long way. It’s easy to let yourself off the hook time and time again when you keep saying “I’m too busy to eat healthy” but it’s a big white flag for some work to do when you start saying “I’m eating this to distract myself from the stress of xyz.” Use the strategies I talk about here to work through emotional eating and change your thought process to alter your reactions to stress-inducing situations.
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