Solving Stress & Emotional Eating

Hello SparkPeople Members

I hope you had a great week!

This week in my series of sharing activities I do to reach my own goals I'll talk about stress and emotional eating.

As a person who grew up with anxiety, I dealt with stress a big part of my life before figuring out how to overcome anxiety for the most part by using the underlying SparkPeople program!

When we first started SparkPeople, we were surprised to learn that emotional eating was the top issue for our members. We realized:

What's going on in your head

is usually more important

than what goes in your mouth!

This issue highlights one of the major reasons we like to integrate the best of health and fitness (elements that help your body) with the best of goal-setting, leadership, motivation, and behavioral psychology (elements that help your mind).

You might know everything there is to know about nutrition and fitness, but that can all go out the window in a flash if you are susceptible to stress and emotional eating. This can then quickly turn into a downward spiral causing you to fall off track with many of your goals.

The first thing I like to ask people is to do a self-awareness check about this issue: Are you susceptible to stress and emotional eating?

I recognize that I still do stress-eating to this day on some occasions -- like grabbing chocolate or snack foods when my kids melt down (I've decreased this considerably after dramatically lowering the amount of sugar and simple carbs I eat this year).

If the answer to the first question is yes, then the next self-awareness exercise is to write down exactly what triggers your stress eating and why. The best next step is to start solving those issues one at a time (this may take a long time). For example, if you spend time with someone who stresses you out, either figure out how to confront that issue, spend less time with that person, or actively CHOOSE to not let that person's actions affect your mood. Try to remember that much of the time, you are in control of your response in any situation.

The most dramatic example I've ever seen of choosing your response comes in Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning book where he talks about his experiences in a Nazi concentration camp. He said that no matter what the guards took from him (which was just about everything), he retained control of his response to their actions. At the time I read this, one trait I had from anxiety was a bit of "victim mentality." After reading this, that trait stopped almost immediately. I figured that if this man -- who had everything taken from him in one of the most horrible situations possible -- retained the power to choose his reaction to what others did to him -- then certainly I could do the same thing under my "normal" circumstances.

Are there situations like this in your life where you can choose to control your response including not letting something cause you as much stress?

This is a concept that you can actively practice over time -- working to continually improve your reaction to stress.

I got so excited about this topic as I started writing that next week I will do a part 2 to this topic so this week's doesn't get too long.

In the meantime, take some time to really think about this and become self-aware of how you handle stress.

Let me know if this affects you in today's blog!

SparkCheers!

Chris "SparkGuy" Downie



Chris (SparkGuy)

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