Post No.: 0947
Furrywisepuppy says:
Stress (a physiological and psychological response to a real or perceived threat) can affect consumption – most people over-eat when stressed, although some under-eat. Well our food choices when stressed do more universally tend to become more calorie-dense, as relatively more palatable carbohydrate, fat and/or salt-rich ‘comfort foods’ become preferred (Post No.: 0767 investigated the ‘bliss point’ of deliciousness). Food variety also tends to decrease.
A lack of sleep makes us all feel a bit grrrumpy and stressed, and like anything that makes us feel this way, we may end up trying to make ourselves feel better via consuming lots of pleasurable foods, which tend to be dense in calories. This can temporarily boost our dopamine levels. There’s a link between working late shifts and an increased risk of obesity too, possibly because of staying up for more hours per day or hormones and body clocks being disrupted.
When snacking, people often cycle between sweet and salty snacks continuously. (Salty foods make people want to drink more too, and the choice will often be sweet drinks like soda, thus maximising sales for fast food outlets.) People often cite a lack of time to cook as well so typically gravitate towards convenience or fast-food choices – albeit fruit is also quite convenient yet is seldom selected when stressed, and people often waste their time in other ways without considering those activities problematic, thus it’s really more about a lack of relative calorie density and effort.
The rewarding effects of calorie-dense comestibles on the brain can temporarily attenuate our feelings of stress. But this is a short-term strategy that’s harmful in the long-term if employed repeatedly.
Chronic stress itself directly increases blood sugar levels chronically due to needing a ready energy supply in the muscles to enact a rapid ‘fight or flight’ response. But lots of modern stresses are social ones, like feelings of status, and aren’t down to needing to actually physically run away from a threat or physically fight something, and if this ready energy supply in the muscles isn’t used up, it gets stored by the liver or converted into fat. And if one’s blood sugar levels are chronically elevated then this increases the risk of diabetes too. (Concerning blood pressure – acute stress raises our blood pressure but the link between chronic stress and hypertension is weaker. Things like our genetics, diet or smoking are larger factors.)
Obesity itself increases the risk of developing type 2 diabetes – obese people produce a larger spike in blood glucose levels compared to non-obese people after consuming the exact same meal. And diabetes is precisely a problem of having blood glucose levels chronically too high because this damages blood vessels.
Food may also not taste as sweet when we’re under stress hence another reason why high-sugar foods become preferred, when what’s best for us – unless we genuinely need an immediate shot of high glucose to be able to escape as fast as we can from an existential threat like a predator – are foods that don’t repeatedly tax our glucose homeostasis regulation with high sugar intakes.
High cortisol and low serotonin levels are linked with the degree of autonomy and independence you have in your life – if you’re constantly being ordered about by bosses then it chronically raises your stress levels, which can lead to a suppressed immune system and a greater risk of heart attack than from even hypertension or smoking. (Serotonin affects our mood, memory, appetite/digestion and sleep, amongst other functions.)
Many people admit to regularly over-eating for comfort. Comfort eating can also act as a distraction from having to deal with an underlying emotional conflict like boredom, pain or anxiety. But instead of using food as an ephemeral plaster, we need to directly tackle the root problem that’s chronically causing us so much daily stress because comfort eating isn’t the cure – becoming overweight will in fact risk more physical health problems (plus perhaps mental health problems too if we develop a low body confidence due to obesity). It’s normal to feel the need for comfort once in a while but not when it’s sustained over months and years. Comfort eating does indeed make us feel temporarily better, like a metaphorical hug in a bowl. It’s like a dose of opioid painkillers makes us feel less pain – but only temporarily – whilst long-term usage is deleterious for one’s health. It’s a similar case with many other things that give us immediate and temporary rewarding (addictive) hits of dopamine. Uncertainty, stress and the ‘fight or flight’ response make us live for now and not think about the long-term future – but many short-term gratifications, if repeated too frequently, can result in long-term problems.
People with a healthy self-esteem will usually look after themselves properly and believe in a long future for themselves – living with one eye on tomorrow and not like there’ll be no tomorrow. A virtuous cycle is also put into motion when someone regularly exercises and eats well, and therefore feels well and looks well, and therefore carries on exercising and eating well. We must respect ourselves enough before we treat our bodies with respect. We take care of who and what we love – although to excess this would manifest as vanity and narcissism. Everything that’s healthy is about balance.
The opposite is also true – a major component of over-eating is denial, which arguably stems from a lack of self-esteem. People with low self-esteem often routinely resort to comfort eating, hence they put on weight, and avoid the gym even more, and thus hate themselves even more, and so forth in a vicious cycle. For these people, they need to solve the root problem of feeling more confident. And as identified above, we need to love and respect ourselves first – to show ourselves some self-compassion and understand our intrinsic self-worth – before we feel motivated to take care of our health (in truly healthy ways without looking for supposed shortcuts, quick-fixes or fakery) because we’ll know we’re worth the effort. Woof!
Some people enter a spiral of ‘I’m already unhealthy so it won’t make any more difference if I eat this or don’t do that’ (the ‘what the hell effect’ – as in you think you’ve failed anyway so what’s the point in trying to fail less i.e. resignation). But every calorie counts.
At times, people consciously admit to eating what they do in the amounts they do but eat them not because they don’t know it’s unhealthy for them but because of emotional reasons. At other times, people will deny their own (yet are quick to point out other people’s!) secret eating habits. They’ll kid themselves regarding what they eat, what they don’t eat, when they eat, how often they eat and how much they eat. They may instead blame their genes, glands, big bones or other non-personally-responsible things. Some people want to avoid cognitive dissonance so much that they’d rather be told that they have a disease, like a thyroid issue, than not. They’d rather be truly ill for an unpreventable reason than be culpable for the way they are. Or they might rationalise that they prefer being overweight because it’s difficult to justify doing something potentially harmful to oneself. (But everyone who’s active and fit advocates being fit whilst you rarely ever hear people say, “Come on, become obese, it’s amazing”(!))
We can unwittingly delude ourselves of certain things to maintain our own positive personal self-images, like convincing ourselves that something unhealthy is healthy for us and therefore we’re being healthy. Sometimes people don’t want to know the truth, like regarding how many calories are in that pie, because they think ignorance is bliss – as if, if they don’t know the facts then they can deny responsibility. But they’re obviously only fooling themselves.
The TV documentary series Secret Eaters demonstrated how people often fool themselves concerning how much and how well they really eat. Away from the cameras (or so they thought), many gorge on junk food – as if, if other people don’t see it then it doesn’t count! Some even attempt to present a false account of their typical average consumption when they’re participating on the show. It all highlights how much numerous biases play a role regarding how we can delude ourselves concerning our self-image of living healthily. We want to naturally preserve our dignity and desired image to others so we often exaggerate or say whatever will prevent others from thinking we’re gluttonous, lazy or undisciplined. But sometimes the words and even private thoughts don’t match the actions and therefore evidential outcomes. You can fool your mind but not your body.
Self-reported consumption surveys are thus unreliable. And one person’s subjective ‘not eating much’ or ‘highly active’ can be another person’s ‘feast’ or ‘lazy day’ if they compared the objective amounts being discussed. (Some people think they’re ‘cooking’ when they heat up some readymade burgers and oven chips whilst others wouldn’t think this was actual cooking at all.) Some can rationalise to themselves that if they order a whole pizza for themselves, with chips and dips on the side and ice cream for dessert too, then they’re still demonstrating restraint because they ordered a zero-sugar soda! Some say things like, “I’ve only snacked on two chocolate bars today” or constantly compare themselves to those who are worse rather than better than them to justify their own behaviours.
So sometimes someone who seems healthy and attributes their good health to their genes does actually eat well on balance and is quite active even without doing formal exercise. You may have seen them scoffing several biscuits at once but they just don’t do this frequently, and they may take their doggy for walkies daily but don’t count that as activity. Meanwhile, someone else may assume cheese is healthy (it is high in calcium but also in saturated fat) and if they take the stairs instead of the elevator one time, they’ll consider themselves a saint who needs cake to reward such an accomplishment!
We’re not following others for every minute of their lives thus extrapolations of their behaviours are prone to error. So here, in this context, you might see someone polish off a massive meal yet they look thin, so you assume they’re ‘naturally thin’ – but that’s only because you don’t realise they don’t snack very much and/or they’re extremely active when you don’t see them. (Also, ‘looking thin’ doesn’t indicate fitness – so you may envy their looks but their heart, lungs and visceral fat levels could potentially be just as bad as an obese person’s if they don’t really eat and exercise healthily.)
Emotional eating is different to regular hunger – it comes on suddenly rather than gradually over the course of a few hours and causes very specific cravings, whereas a wide range of foods can satisfy regular hunger. Emotional eaters often feel guilty after eating, leading to further stress and a vicious cycle. Certain victuals can become associated with certain emotions too and then become consumed out of habit instead of hunger. Emotional eating habits can also be learned, like when a child is consistently given sweets for good behaviour or ice cream when sad.
Prenatal stress predisposes an offspring to be more stressed too, which could potentially in turn lead to higher incidences of stress-related eating behaviours in them. (The reason for particular cravings while pregnant may be about seeking necessary nutrients for the baby and/or mother, but the full answer is so far inconclusive.)
Both poor nutrition and stress early in life are associated with mental and physical difficulties later in life. And since both these problems are preventable – they can be solved. Obesity was rare a hundred years ago – it’s not an inevitable genetic, hereditary or congenital state. Environmental changes caused the expansion of the problem in the first place thus changing the environment can solve the problem too if we all have the will to do so.
Woof!
Comment on this post by replying to this tweet:
