Stress-eating is what girls do. Ninety percent of the time, we do everything we can to look hot: spend hours on the elliptical, straighten our hair, do our makeup, get breast implants, etc. But that other 10 percent? We have so much work to get done we forget what full feels like. We’re stressed out, ticked off and nothing tastes as good as skinny feels…except for a spoonful of Nutella.
Why shouldn’t we eat we eat whatever the heck we want for a week? Because it’ll make us bloated? Because it’ll make us break out? Sorry, Cosmo, but I don’t really feel like learning how to separate my food from my feelings when I have less than 12 hours to learn me some plant biology. Last night, I wasn’t even stress-eating while studying; I was stress-eating because I was so stressed out that I’d been procrastinating from studying.
No matter how bad stress-eating may make us feel, we will never stop doing it. And those articles that list off the “best foods” for us to stress-eat? I don’t know about you, but I’d rather have a bowl of cookie dough ice cream than a handful of almonds – whether or not I’m stressed. Here are some more reasons why, sometimes, nothing beats chowing down:
Reason 1: At least you’re still awake.
I’ve tried doing the “15 minute” nap to “refresh” my mind and stop myself from mindlessly eating Wheat Thins. I laid down with only half of my p-set done and woke up an hour before class started. I was, however, very refreshed.
Reason 2: It guilts you into studying.
I don’t know about you, but if I just stress-ate a quesadilla and chicken fingers, it suddenly becomes my duty to finish this CS assignment right. now. If I ate a carrot, however, I can just get back to it after this episode of “Glee” is over.
Reason 3: It’s worth it.
What’s better, eating 500 calories worth of bananas or cookies? All of that water content in fruit will make your stomach feel full… which will make you feel gross. Sweets, however, pack an amazing amount of calories into a tiny portion – you’re so light you can do anything!
Reason 4: Your body doesn’t know what the heck is going on anyway.
If you’re like me and drink coffee and pull all-nighters like nobody’s business during finals week, your body is probably so confused by your sleep schedule and weird eating habits that its circadian rhythm metabolism is all effed up anyway.
Reason 5: Everybody’s doing it.
Don’t you want to fit in?
Reason 6: Nobody likes those in-your-face health freaks.
There is nothing more annoying than when you’re enjoying a stress-food binge of In-N-Out with your friends, and then someone walks in eating baby carrots.
Reason 7: Because you can.
Neveragain will you be able to eat a pound of Sour Patch Kids, a bag of Ghirardelli chocolates, and think to yourself: Yeah, but I needed it.
Reason 8: It brings out your creativity.
My best friend was once so stressed out that she took a stick of butter, dipped it in a bowl of sugar, and then poured Hershey’s syrup over it. And ate it. Literally, a stick of butter. She said it tasted like fudge.
This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Stanford chapter.