This is a heavy time of year. It’s crummy outside and the only thing we can think about is lying in our beds all day long. We are getting annoyed with our dull day-to-day routines and spring break could NOT come any faster. On top of that, Valentine’s Day is approaching, and you my friend, might not be receiving any special gifts that day. The stress we have as we draw near mid-semester wears on us and our emotional state. One day we could be could ready to take on the world as if we are Wonder Woman herself, whereas another day we could cry at the drop of a hat. It’s not fair.
One way stress gets to us is that it causes us to eat our feelings by over eating and stuffing ourselves with junk food. Whether at a loss for time or when junk food just seems to taste better for the moment, stress controls what we are putting into our bodies.
There have been several connections between the amount of stress we have in our lives and the relationship we have with food during those periods. Emotional stress has been linked to impulsive eating and binge eating. Basically, stress is causing us to eat without any enjoyment. It’s as though we are in a hotdog eating contest. We want to eat as many hotdogs as humanly possible in a given amount of time, without using our senses to enjoy the hotdog at all.
Binge eating to suppress negative emotions actually intensifies those emotions when we realize we’ve eaten an entire family-size bag of chips. If we’re pounding down an enormous amount of relatively unhealthy food, the stress will still be there, but now it’s coupled with the guilt of eating like a crazy person. It’s a horrible cycle.
Don’t fall victim to the stress monster who tries to convince you that you want to eat your body weight in McDonald’s dollar menu food.
Here are some simple and effective ways to control the stress and its effects on your diet:
Find a positive outlet for your stress.
As you look at your schedule and see all that has to done by Friday, you can feel your heart rate increase, and the stress beginning to set in. Breathe! Take a moment to give yourself a break. Try working out some of the stress at the gym. Think about what you like to do that makes you feel relaxed. Whether running a few miles at the rec or painting your finger nails calms you down, do it. Do things that you know you can accomplish and will give you a sense of, “OK, I can do this.”
Are you really hungry?
Ask yourself if you really are hungry. If you have to convince yourself you are, you probably aren’t. There’s nothing wrong with not being hungry either. Drink a glass of water if you are unsure. The water will fill you up, but if you still feel hungry, then eat.
If you are hungry, take away the temptations that will give you a guilty feeling after you eat them.
There’s plenty of filling foods that are affordable and nutritious that will not give you a guilty feeling. Foods that have been proven to de-stress you are: tea, dark chocolate, fish, oatmeal, milk, and the list goes on. These basic foods have common vitamins and minerals in them that been linked to reducing stress and anxiety in the brain.
Talk to your friends!
Talking with your friends about your stress and what’s bringing you down will make you feel like things are manageable again. When things are manageable, it’s easier to relax and maintain healthy eating habits. A support system can get you through anything!
Write positive notes to yourself.
On my bathroom mirror I have four messages I wrote myself. One of them being, “SARA- YOU CAN DO ANYTHING.” Whether that’s true of not, I don’t know, but as I read it I start to believe I can really do anything I want to. Writing reassuring positive notes to yourself and truly reading them will boost your attitude about the world around you. Having five exams, three group meetings, and not to mention the readings assigned is stressful, but one little sentence reminding you that you CAN achieve it is powerful.
Write a small list of goals that are very achievable.
Rome was not built in a day. The big things that are causing you to go crazy won’t go away in a day either. Try making a small list of things that need to be done. No more than five achievable things should be on your list. “Wash dishes, email professor, take out trash, fold clothes, put clothes away…” Completing all of these in the order that you wrote them is the key to unlocking the greater problems in your life.
Stress brings us down in different ways. We all know the feeling that the world is on our shoulders and we are starting to have a hard time handling the load. Eating a pint of ice cream, may seem like great idea at the time, but it’s not. The ice cream isn’t going to make any problems go away. If anything it’s going to ruin the spring break body we’ve been working so hard to achieve, and no one wants that.