Monthly Archives: February 2009

Dealing with Stress, part 2

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Read my first post on the topic, Dealing with Stress.

I’ve been doing some reading and a lot of thinking about stress and stress
eating and how that’s affecting my weight and weight loss efforts.

Stress and Eating

This article was a real revelation to me. In short, we eat in response to stress because our bodies have evolved to need a calorie boost in response to stress. Eating that chocolate or bag of chips tells your body that everything is fine so it will turn off the stress response. No wonder that trip to the vending machine feel so good!

Of course, the easy answer is to get rid of the stress, but that’s also more of less impossible for most people, me included. I’ve found it helpful over the last week to just remind myself WHY I have the munchies and realize that it’s stress-eating, not real hunger, motivating me.

So, here is what I’ve been working on. When I feel the urge to munch, first I take a minute and evaluate how I feel. Am I worried, stressed, upset, etc.? Often I am. Then, I try doing something else for a little while to take my mind off the stress.

This often happens at work, where I’m limited to what I can do. I’ve found that taking a walk up and down the hall can help. Getting physically away from my desk and phone helps me to remove myself mentally from the stress as well.

I’ll ignore my e-mail and/or phone, particularly if they’re the root of the stress, and simply work for a while. I may switch up what I’m working on and choose something a little easier to give my mind  rest.

No, I’m not resisting the call of junk food all the time, but I am resisting more than I used to.

Dealing with Stress

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I’ve been really thinking a lot lately about my issues with stress and how I stress-eat in response to that.

In general, stress sends me heading for the chocolate or other sweets. I don’t have to be particularly hungry, or hungry at all, to feel the need to indulge. I’ve also noticed that it tends to happen when I’m unable to remove myself from the stressful situation.

Let’s say I’m at work and something upsetting happens. I can’t do much there to deal with it, except continue working and try to ignore the event that bothered me. So far, that hasn’t worked well for me at all. I find that I head to the vending machine all too often in those cases, even when I don’t particularly even want what I’m buying!

Stress when I’m away from work is another story, and easier to handle. I’ll do something with my hands for a while, which helps a lot. I knit and spin, so working on something like that tends to help me get my mind off things. If I’m upset and angry, then I’ll do housework. If all else fails, I just take a nice nap and try to forget it for a while.

My point is though, I can do more away from work to deal with it than I can at work. So, stress eating is a particular problem for me there, and I’m not having much luck coming up with ways to deal with it.

I’ve actually considered putting some knitting in my desk and doing a few rows when I’m bent out of shape, but I have a feeling that wouldn’t go over so well. Besides, I’m so busy at the office, I would never be able to do that regardless of how much stress I’m under.

I’d consider taking a quick walk, but again, the busy factor comes in to play. There are days when I honestly don’t have time to do that, so while it may be an option some of the time, it’s not going to be one all the time.

So, I need to do some thinking and experimenting. How to deal with stress at work when I can’t use any of my usual techniques? If anyone has ideas, they’d be much appreciated.