Lament of the Mind

What to do about stress-eating

docgold13:

Stress-eating (emotional eating when you’re not really hungry or your body doesn’t really need any more calories) is a very common issue for people coping with anxiety and/or depression.  Even in sub-clinical cases (where the difficulties with anxiety/depression is mild or transient) stress-eating can be a significant irritant and source of concern.  There’s no quick-fix for this difficulty, but there are some easy practices that quite often can act to reduce troubles with stress-eating.  

In terms of structural neurology, hunger and appetite appear to be mitigated by way of the amygdala, the hippocampus, the insula, and the orbitofrontal cortex.  Unfortunately, these same structural components are also heavily involved in experience of emotion.  And this may have much to do with how eating habits can be so often affected by feeling depressed and/or anxious.  

Put simply, feeling especially sad or worried accidentally tricks the brain into thinking that the body is hungry.  The involuntary aspects of our neurology are very susceptible to being tricked… and we can use that to our advantage.  
So, how do we trick our minds into thinking we are no longer hungry?  Of course the best (and most annoying) answer is to eat healthy and get lots of exercise.  Exercise gets the body to have a full parasympathetic reaction (an effective modulation of fight/flight stress).  But lets face it, getting lots of exercise can be pretty difficult when one is feeling depressed and/or anxious.  
Suggesting that a patient get more exercise almost always earns me the ‘Donna face’ - that look from the patient that sarcastically says, ‘oh thank you for suggesting something that is completely and entirely unhelpful.’

There are, however, easier things you can do that tricks your body into feeling its had exercise…
Here’s the easiest one: tense up the muscles in your arms and legs.  Curl your arms up into your chest constricting the muscles as hard as you can.  

Meanwhile, stretch your legs out, pointing your toes.  Hold this constricted pose for a count of ten.  

Then relax your muscles for another count of ten.  Repeat three times and then let your body fully relax, taking deep breaths in through the nose and out through your mouth.  

Doing this automatically causes a release of various hormones and neurotransmitters in the brain that are associated with an effective reaction to stress.  It sort of completes a circuit that says to the involuntary parts of your brain that a fight-or-flight stress was encountered and effectively dealt with.  In turn, a secondary wave of hormones are released that helps the body to feel relaxed.  In other words, you can receive the neurological benefits of exercising without actually exercising.  
This process basically ‘chills out’ the amygdala, hippocampus, insula, and the orbitofrontal cortex.  Which in turn, reduces appetite and switches off that insatiable hunger.  Practicing this shortly after eating breakfast, lunch or dinner will even further enhance its effectiveness in terms of curbing your appetite.