How Stress Causes Overeating and How to Manage It

<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">You’re not imagining it.  Stress makes people want to eat. </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">If you’re an emotional eater, when you’re stressed out, you’re more likely to feel the urge to eat. That’s because when your body feels stress, it produces certain stress hormones which cause you to crave comfort foods. </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Sometimes, stress might kill your appetite because the stress hormone adrenaline puts you in a state of fight or flight. </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">When stress is chronic, however, the opposite happens.  </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Too much stress upsets your hormonal balance, making it harder to lose weight and easier to gain it. </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">This is made even worse by the overconsumption of simple carbohydrates, which are sugary snacks like candy bars and soda. They also can cause a hormone imbalance. </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Basically, being consistently stressed out for a long period of time causes your body to produce an assortment of hormones that make it more likely that your body will store fat instead of using it for energy, and cause you to want to eat more. </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Stress also seems to affect your food preferences, making you more likely to consume foods high in fat, sugar, or both. These foods reduce the stress response and can calm your emotions temporarily. That’s why many people associate stress eating with feeling better. And guess what? That causes you to want to keep doing it. </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The problem is that it doesn’t solve what’s causing your stress in the first place. And by consistently eating in response to stress when you aren’t hungry, you’ll gain weight. </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">So what can you do to prevent stress from undermining your weight loss goals? </span></p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;