Everyone experiences stress to a certain degree. For some, stress leads to unhealthy habits, such as drug and alcohol abuse. Others use a less conspicuous crutch -- food. Comfort foods can indeed make life more comfortable, but when overeating is a way of life, or when you diet excessively in response to stress, you put yourself at risk for health complications, some of which may be severe and lasting. Talk to your doctor if stress is affecting your diet.
Stress and Binge Eating
For some people, stress causes changes in weight because it affects their appetites or leads to emotional eating as a way of self-medicating. Food can serve as a distraction and a way to escape difficult life situations. If compulsive eating becomes a regular occurrence, you may have a binge-eating disorder. Often binge-eating leads to excessive dieting as a person attempts to counteract his high-calorie splurge. Unfortunately restrictive dieting only ends in more binge eating and a perpetual feast-or-famine mentality.
Stress and Obesity
Stress that lingers can not only shape your diet, it can lead to heart disease, diabetes, obesity and high blood pressure. In addition, psychological stress within families is purported to contribute to childhood obesity, as evidenced in a 2008 study at the Division of Pediatrics and Diabetes Research Centre, Linkoping, Sweden, and published in 2008 in "The Journal of Pediatrics."
Dieting and Stress
Dieting is an arduous undertaking that requires self-restraint and, depending on your normal eating patterns, significant changes. Dieting can sometimes help decrease stress, however. Because a poor diet can contribute to stress, particularly if you lack certain vitamins, such as vitamin B-12, a balanced diet may help improve your stress levels while also promoting better sleep and increasing your energy levels.
Considerations
If you're uncertain if stress is affecting your eating habits, look for physical manifestations of stress. Chronic headaches, muscle tension, general pain, gastrointestinal upset, decreased sex drive, sleeplessness and chest pain are other signs of stress. Talk to your doctor about stress management if you experience these symptoms.
