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Stress Eating And It’s Evils

By Nafisa K / 2020-03-12

Ever find yourself face deep, eating your guilty pleasure when you were stressed? Ever find yourself over-eating your favorite dessert when you’re emotional? 

The biological response to a stressful situation is generally to decrease one’s food intake. However, some people instead turn to food as a source of comfort in the form of emotional eating. Once ingested, fat- and sugar-filled foods seem to have a feedback effect that dampens stress-related responses and emotions. These comfort foods seem to counteract stress — and this may contribute to people's stress-induced craving for those foods.

Sometimes, it’s just in your genes. Although research in this particular field is still developing, it has already found a strong relationship between genetics and emotional eating. There are also strong indications that the same genes that contribute to obesity and depression also contribute to emotional eating.

Emotional eating is both physically and psychologically harmful. Physically there is the risk of weight gain and its corollary ailments like diabetes, high cholesterol, and high blood pressure. In the case of compulsive or binge eating, the original emotional eating is aggravated to a new level.


In the same way that a drug addiction develops out of a tolerance for smaller doses, binging develops out of an increased need to stuff feelings. No amount of food keeps the feelings down, so the emotional eating turns into excessive eating.

 

Learn about the connection between emotional eating and your DNA by ordering a LiveUnique Life DNA kit today.