Episode Transcript
Let me ask you—have you ever reached for that bag of chips or those
cookies after a tough day, telling yourself, “I’m just a stress eater”? If so,
you’re not alone, and this episode is for you. We’re going to uncover
why stress feels like it has a direct hotline to your cravings and how you
can break free from that cycle.
Hey everyone! Welcome to The Arm Coach podcast, episode 48!
Today, we're going to take a look at the connection between
stress and your eating. Really, we're looking at your overeating.
So let's dive right into our coaching session.
Have you ever said that you're a stress eater? Have you ever
automatically taken out those cookies after a challenging day at
work? When you have conditioned yourself to reach for food
when you feel the emotion of stress, then you've experienced
stress eating. And stress eating is sooo frustrating because you
think you can’t stop as long as this stressful situation is
happening in your life, right? That is usually the way that you
think. So here's what we're going to talk about today. We're
going to talk about what stress is, and how it shows up in your
life, in your mind, and in your body. And we're going to talk about
why you may have connected stress with eating or overeating in
the first place. Then we can begin to take a look at what step
you can take to disconnect your eating from your stressful mood.
And how to view your stress differently. And later, in the nex
episode, we will continue with more depth about how to not eat
when you're stressed.
So let's look at this first. What is stress? Well, I know that yo
probably get that feeling in the pit of your stomach when you
think about something in your life that's stressful, right? So stress
is the reaction in your body to a harmful or threatening situation.
Now it could be something that you're imagining, or it could be
something that is real and is actually happening in the moment.
When you think you're being threatened, when you think you're in
danger, the feeling that you have, the stress, it produces this
chemical reaction in your body. This reaction is something that's
wired in you, in all of us, for survival. Because this reaction,
called the fight or flight reaction, I'm sure you've heard of th
it's designed to help you do what you need to do in the moment
to protect yourself. So this reaction is called a stress reaction.
When you're in the middle of it, you know what it feels like. It's
not a great feeling because your heart rate goes up, your
muscles tighten, your blood pressure goes up, and your
breathing speeds up. This is a perfect example of the mind body
connection that you have. Your mind perceives something in your
life or in your environment, that might be threatening to you. And
then you experience feelings in your body that can lead you to do
things you don't want to do. All these things happen in your body
so that if you needed to fight or flee for survival, you'd be rea
And I'm sure you can imagine why we needed this response for
our protection. Stress means different things to all of us, right
What makes your friend feel stressed, may feel like no big deal to
you. And some of us are better at managing stress than others.
Stress in small doses can actually be a good thing. It can help
you get things done, and it can protect you from a threatening
situation. So our goal is not to have a life that has no stress. You
know that vision we all have, of sitting on the deserted island
with no phone, no computer, and maybe even no people, so that
we would have no stress. That's not actually what we really want.
But you have evolved to be able to handle small doses of stress.
And it keeps you on your toes. But we have not evolved to really
be able to handle long term constant stress, without getting
results that you don't want. What I mean by that is, it may be
emotional results. They may be physical results. They may be
changes in the way you think. And they definitely may b
changes in what you do. And that's what we're talking about
today, is what you do when you’re stressed. The things that you
do that relate to the way that you eat when you're stressed.
So when you're stressed, have you ever really sat down and
thought about what emotions you're experiencing? Maybe you
do what most people do, and that is you lump all those negative
feelings into one big description, and you call it stress. That
stress for you might look like feelings of low self esteem. It might
look like feeling lonely, feeling broken, like something is really
wrong with you. Or feeling depressed. You might have frustration
and certainly be in a pretty negative mood. And because of all of
these feelings, you might isolate yourself, which might even make
the stress feel worse. Like you're kind of out there in the world
alone. Now physically, maybe you feel tired, or have headaches,
or stomach issues. Maybe you can’t sleep because you're
ruminating about your problem. You might, during a period of
stress, I know I do, get sick more often and have all kinds of
physical symptoms. So I'm wondering, does this sound familiar
to you? Because what we're doing right now, is we're breaking
down the definition of how you actually experience that big
general description of stress. And we're seeing how it affects s
many different parts of your mind and your body. Now, during th
period where you think your situation is stressful, you might
become forgetful. You might have trouble focusing, and
remembering things. And it's truly common for you to see your
world through pretty dark lens, either feeling pessimistic, or like
things will never get better. Now all these thoughts and feelings
lead to your actions, right? And the action we're talking about
here is eating, or overeating. So imagine that you are
experiencing a stress reaction. This is definitely going to aff
your eating. Now for some of us, it leads us to lose our appetite.
When I have continual average stress, my appetite increases.
When I have serious stress, serious, extreme, or prolonged
stress, my appetite decreases. So I want you to ask yourself,
What does your appetite do? What happens to your desire for
food when you have stress, either extreme or mild. Now some of
us might use drugs or alcohol. Or maybe you smoke cigarettes.
But if you're here with me now, odds are good that you're in the
habit of medicating your stress with food. Food to soothe you
and lessen that really uncomfortable feeling of stress. What
happens is that you connect the feeling of stress, whether it's
from something real, or just the way you're looking at your
situation, you connect it with soothing yourself with food. And
when you soothe yourself with food, you are not eating due to
physical hunger. When you're not eating from physical hunger,
you know you won't get the signal that you've had enough. Why?
Because your body wasn't giving you the signal that it needed
food in the first place. So, when you eat from stress, you'r
eating to distract yourself from your situation. You're distracted
from your situation, because of the very act of eating, the
physical pleasure of eating, and the fact that food lights up that
reward center of your brain. And temporarily, it does make you
feel better. You're also distracted from your situation, because
after you eat without hunger, most likely, now you're focusing on
what you just did. How “bad” you were. And I say “bad” with
quotation marks. You know, you're not bad in my eyes. But
you're focusing on how bad you think you were, how heavy you
feel, and on and on and on. And those bad feelings distract you
from whatever was causing the original stress. So even though
both things feel bad, the result of overeating, and the original
situation, the overeating, is familiar. Beating yourself up is
familiar. Overeating is familiar. And you can deal with familiar
easier than you have been able to deal with the frightening
feeling that something is wrong, and you don't know how to deal
with it. It's the case of this familiar pain, versus the unfamiliar
pain. And I would bet that if you were not trained to look at, and
manage what's going on in your mind, and that's what we work
on here, if you're not trained to look at what's happening for you,
then you will take the familiar pain all the time.
So you see what stress is. In listening to all the different ways i
shows up in your mind, in your body, you can probably give me a
list right now of how you trained yourself to react to stress in your
life. And I want to remind you that that's exactly what you've
done. You've made a connection between interpreting something
in your life is stressful, as threatening, and then you simply
developed your habit of using food as a way to feel better from
the stress. Now you know that in the moment, as we discussed,
it works. The eating does make you feel better, briefly. But it als
gives you a side effect of unwanted extra weight and flab on y
body, and a feeling of helplessness. Sometimes you may have
said something like, ‘I had to give a big presentation at work, of
course I'm overeating’. Or ‘my child is failing math, of course I'm
hitting the chips’. And you say that like, of course there's no
other way. So if you've been listening to me for a while now, you
know that there are situations, circumstances, that are real.
Factual. That everyone would agree are real. And then, there’s
your perception. Your story. The way you view what's happening
in your life. Those thoughts, that interpretation, that is what is
creating the stress you have. And your thought that, what will
make you feel better is food, that thought is also just created by
you. And it creates and then strengthens the connection between
your feeling of stress, and your eating. So it doesn't just happen.
It's something that you create, maybe with a little awareness,
maybe with not a lot of awareness.
Now what I'd like to start discussing with you, is how to stop this
pattern of feeling stress and eating. And we're going to continue
this discussion next week, too, because it's a big topic. But for
now, let's start thinking about how to stop your stress eating. The
very first thing I want you to do, is to become aware of what'
happening when it happens. When you begin to feel stress, you
will have certain, very familiar symptoms. As we mentioned, it
may be the way you're thinking, or feeling physically, or feeling
emotionally. You might catch yourself going into a certain routine
that you do when you're stressed, and suddenly you're aware,
‘Oh I'm doing my stress reaction, I'm feeling threatened. My
thoughts are that there's an immediate problem, and my mind
and body are working together to protect me’. I want you to
recognize what's happening. I want you to call it what it is. Step
back and see the chain of events going on inside you. And that's
going to help you prevent yourself from just jumping in and
reacting to the stress. Get familiar with the things that you say to
yourself at times like this. Many of my clients say things that you
might recognize yourself. Things like, ‘I just can't handle this. I'm
overwhelmed. This is too much. I just want to get in bed and pull
up the covers.’ Do you ever say those things? I know I've said
them in my life. Now, think about what you say to yourself, and
even write it down. Why? Because I want you to be able to
recognize what's happening faster and faster, so that you have a
choice of how you respond. Now notice that I'm saying respond,
not react. When you react to something, it feels much more
involuntary. Or without much thought, it's automatic. But when
you respond to something, it’s more likely by conscious choice.
And that is key when you're trying to take charge of your stress. I
want you to evaluate your usual M O to stress with compassion.
No judging, no being impatient or annoyed with yourself. Just
play detective and gather information. Here's what usually
happens. Here's what you usually do. And here's how it goes
down. Then you can decide how you want to do things
differently, in a way that doesn't involve eating when you're no
hungry. Which adds a whole new problem to your stress. Ask
yourself about your situation that feels stressful. Is there
something you need to do right now? Or can you look for another
perspective? Now if no action is required right now, that's a good
sign that maybe at least some of your stress is coming from the
way you're looking at your situation. If there's nothing required of
you right now, is there another way to look at things? Is there a
way you can pause and get perspective? Is there a way you can
rise above your situation, in that moment, and look down and see
what's happening? What do you see? What's real? And what is
your story? And then you can begin to unravel those quick,
automatic reactions that you created to your stressful thinking,
and see that there may be alternatives to eating.
Stress is a normal part of life, and it can be managed. But you
have to be able to recognize, as it's coming upon you. If you
don't recognize what's happening until you're in the middle of it,
you'll keep reacting to stressors, and you'll go right into the
eating habit. Now don't be upset that up until now, this is what
you've been doing, this is how you've been handling your stress.
It's just that this is what you learned to manage yourself and to
make yourself feel better. You've been doing the best you knew
how. And now you'll be able to see what creates your stress in
the first place. And when it's real, and it requires action, an
when it's stress caused by what you're thinking about. That's
what you'll be able to discern. And you'll also know how to
identify it faster, and how to decide if you really need to do
anything at all, beyond simply recognizing what's happening. In
our next session, we're going to go into detail about what to do
when you feel that mind body sensation of stress. And we're
going to go into detail about how to break the connection
between the feeling and that action of overeating. For now, I want
you to focus on identifying your patterns around stress and
eating. So calmly think back to a stressful situation you've been
through recently, and do a little bit of analysis of how you
handled it. What actually happened? Just the facts. And what did
you think? How did the stress feel in your body? What emotions
did you have? Let's name them. What physical symptoms did
you have, and what did you do in terms of eating? I really want
you to go into detail. I want you to get really clear on what you've
been doing, so we can work together on changing it next week.
That's it for our coaching session on this subject today. I want
you to focus on dealing with this, and observing yourself for this
coming week. See you all next week!
