Emotional eating for stress
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18-03-2024 4:10pm#1
Hello. Hope this is the correct place. I am writing about overeating but it’s psychological.
Basically had a few big ups and downs, break up, job stress and burn out, growing apart from friends. Just a lot of change in the last year or two and it’s all getting to me. I am trying to think my way out of it but working around the clock leaves me deflated on my days off and I’m noticing bad eating habits are creeping back in.
Couple of years ago, I was overweight and destroyed from night shifts. I made some great changes and healthily lost 5 stone over time. It was a massive achievement for me and I had more energy, looked good, felt good.
However, I have noticed since last September I feel like I did when I was overweight. I am actually a healthy weight still but since the 5 stone weight loss years ago, over 2 years, I slowly gained back almost 2 stone. It’s not drastic but I feel it. My clothes are tight and getting uncomfortable. I’m overeating a lot and lacking energy, lost the love for exercise (Since my weight loss years ago, the social media is now oversaturated with perfect fitness people and I find that hard to look at) which is unusual for me as I would run 30km a week 2/3 years ago. I used to love the gym but feel mentally deflated when I go in now and see others. I’m not sure if it’s just me but since Covid, I find everything is overbearing and “too much”. Everything seems extreme. I went down the rabbit hole of investing in an online coach who essentially overcharged me per month for generic advice. I tried to get an in person PT and it seems hard to get a good one. But online coaching was isolating and while it changed my gym routine, I lost no weight and if anything, gained weight.
I think I’m just drained or after hitting a wall but the scary thing now is I’m just eating and eating way more than I did before and I’m trying to stop feeling so deflated if that makes sense? Sleep never helps. I still end up feeling wrecked after a night of sleep. I think if I’m honest, I have been depressed but it’s not something I’ve actively treated. Exercise and keeping to myself used to help but it’s almost like I’ve lost that.
just wondering have others had life get the better of them between work and personal life and had bad habits like this creep in or back in in my case? If so, advice is welcomed.
thanks x
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Get a blood test. Besides all the stress, iron deficiency is one of the top causes of never ending tiredness.
Mind yourself ✨
Petit a petit l'oiseau fait son nid...
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Thanks.
It’s crept up on me slowly and I’ve noticed since before Xmas, I’m nearly dragging myself around exhausted all the time, find it hard to move on my days off and eating more to get energy but now it’s just to fill void. I’m gonna check my iron levels again. Shouldn’t feel so depleted.
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Everything is connected. Food can affect sleep. And Stress. And energy levels good and bad. And each of those things can affect other things. One thing going wrong in our lives can cascade through everything else and great an interconnected storm of awfulness that lead to poor or bad outcomes.
Even something as simple as a Garmin Sports watch can highlight this. My watch records my HRV and Heart beats and so forth and gives me scores for Stress and Sleep that are all interconnected.
If I were to eat - say - a tube of Pringles an hour before bed I can literally see the effects of this the next morning. My stress levels shoot up very quickly after I start the tube and get progressively worse. My sleep score suffers as a result as one of the factors in sleep score is your stress levels during the sleeping period, as well as restlessness and movement and so forth.
All of this results in higher stress and less energy the next day. And high stress and low energy is a predictor of reaching for yet more comfort and convenience foods. And it makes you less likely to take physical exercise or do hard things. And the cycle continues. As depression and anxiety take us down - our motivation to engage in the things that lessen anxiety and motivation go down too - and our propensity to do things that make them worse go up. Alcohol being a great example.
Generally therefore I do not eat anything in the hours before sleep. And when I do I ensure I eat thing that I know have shown to have little to low influence on my stress levels. If I have a large steak covered in a couple of fired eggs and a little salad - my watch stress detectors barely register it for example.
Other than that I can say little that I did not already say in the rather long post I made on your last thread. Though it is sounding more and more - from each thread you start - that you are someone who would benefit from professional medical consultations from your GP and mental health professionals, rather than physical personal trainers.
That said though I share your lack of comfort with Social Media and Gyms. I use neither myself. And in fact the one time I went to a Gym I had a bad experience as one muscle bound He Man gym bunny took exception to me and insisted I go outside to fight him :)
I prefer solitary or more social physical exercise. For solitary I prefer to run alone or similar, getting away from people entirely so for that reason Gyms are not for me. For social I prefer to really be social - so again Gyms are not for me because that tends often to be lots of people alone together. All in the same place but all keeping to themselves. Whereas things like cross fit, capoeira, BJJ, other martial arts, Tai Chi and so forth usually involve 1 to 1 or group sociability and playing off other real humans directly.
I forget if it was Robbie Williams or Robin Williams who said it. But they suggested that one thing worse than being alone is when a person or people make you feel alone. And my feeling about Gyms is exactly that. I feel more alone surrounded by people in places like a Gym than I do when I am literally out alone running through the forest.
Perhaps what you need more than a physical trainer - and that teacher/student dynamic - is exercise partners. Plenty of places to meet them or advertise for them. And sharing a physical regime of that sort with someone can be much more motivating and discipline promoting than relying only on yourself. Especially if you take turns making food for each other too as you tend to make much healthier choices and it takes the stress of as you only have to make it every second day then as the other days its their turn. So after the session you hand over what you made for post session munchies. And tomorrow they hand over theirs.
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You could give fasting a go. I find r/fasting on reddit excellent and it has curbed a lot of my cravings and overeating.
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Try and simplify your life.
There is too much information and competition out there. People are going crazy.
Turn off social media. **** It.
You don't need fitness watches to stress you out either and beat yourself up to. Not at the moment.
Get up early in the morning, get early morning sun, and just walk. Have a healthy breakfast.
That'll set you up for the day. And you can build on that. And if you start getting anxious and stressed, well go back to that as your starting point.
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I’ve heard about an author who wrote “fast like a girl” - it’s about the benefits of fasting and training around your menstrual cycle. Sounds a bit trendy but I find this affects my training and mood hugely.
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Thank you for your reply. Yep, I’m in my 30s so i remember what real life vs fake online life is but what’s scary is there are a generation coming up behind me who think perfection and social media is real. And even though I know the difference, i feel the perfection on social media gives me action paralysis. I just think I’m a long way off from these perfect supermodel types who are perfect in every way and since I’m heading mid 30s, I just feel defeated. I actually have a real job I’ve to turn up to every day lol. I know these people are delulu but it still gets to me. I think how do they have more energy than me!
I feel competition is way worse now since Covid. Dunno what other people’s thoughts are on that. I myself would be easy going at baseline but since we came out of Covid, I’m anxious and feel like I’m rushing everywhere and giving it half ass effort. Rather than just finding my happy spot and staying calm. I get alot more stressed and easily stressed than I used to.
Yeah I think going back to basics is the route to take. In my mind, I work hard, no play and when it comes to a “walk” I turn it into a long distance run because my time is limited and I need to burn calories etc it’s a cortisol cycle lol can’t relax - not really
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Hey Tax.
Thanks for your post. I had to wait until I got home to post. It’s very relatable what you said. The gym is like being alone together. I would be open to exchanging a few words etc with people but everyone is tuned out and willingly tuned out. So in that sense, coupled with online coaching before, I felt very isolated.
Its funny what you said about running being less lonely than a gym. I loved running and still do. I found over Covid when it was just my voice between my two ears, never doubted myself, trained myself, was the lightest I ever was. Whereas ironically, there’s more information out there now and I feel it’s worse.
plus as you said, it’s Nearly worse being surrounded by people who purposely ignore eachother. It’s a very strange atmosphere. It’s like people make a mild smile if they are pushed when they have to acknowledge you but don’t talk to me written on their forehead. That to me screams low self eestem. I just thought seeking out a personal trainer in person would shake things up a bit.
I understand where you are coming from re the professional help. Tbh I think anxiety is my problem after accumulating and pushing down so much stress over the years and in the last year it’s finally bubbling to the surface due to burn out. But I honestly believe other than that, there is nothing wrong with me mentally. I wouldn’t go to GP tbh I’m a medic myself so that’s just anti anxiety meds and I don’t want that in my life. I would prefer to talk or do a mindful activity.
I will be looking at changing my work balance next year hopefully.
But right now, I want to take control of this eating business.
Pringle example was so accurate btw!!
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Anxiety can have a lot of sources and causes. So it is very hard to recommend anything for it.
Some people for example have found their diet causes anxiety. There is one podcaster for example who has been going on for ages about Folic Acid. Allegedly some large % of people have an issue with a gene that is related to metabolizing Folic Acid and B Vitamins. So he claims a lot of people get over their anxiety by removing these things from their diet (basically anything that says it contains Folic Acid or says on the label that it is "fortified") and instead take a Premethylated B Vitamin complex supplement.
This works for a lot of people it seems. For other people like myself it has zero effect except to turn your pee a shade of yellow that reminds me of yellow highlighter pens :) It literally did nothing else for me than that.
But its a good example of how what causes and then cures anxiety in one person can have zero effect in the next person.
For me I am in the "Joe Rogan" camp of anxious people. His theory is that we have evolved for millennia to be in a constant state of anxiety because our environment was so dangerous. Now in our relatively safe modern times are brain is constantly scanning for things to be anxious about but not finding any. Because we are not prey in constant danger any more. So people like him and myself start to really suffer from anxiety because the brain is going into this anxiety overdrive.
What cures him and me? Doing very hard and often very uncomfortable things. He does Ice Baths. I do Jujitsu where I am physically battling other people in real "fights" (BJJ unlike a lot of martial arts you go full on fighting opponents rather than simply practice the forms). The effect it has on us is that our brain goes "Oh thats ok then" because it has found something to be anxious about, and resolved it. So it kind of relaxes and feels it has done it's job.
In short (which clearly I never am) the point is that unless we know what is causing our anxiety we find it difficult to treat it. It could be something in our diet. Our hormones. Our physical activity or lack of it. Our sleep. Our work. Unresolved emotional thoughts. Or whatever. It could be a mix of all or some of those things. Any anti anxiety medications might not help at all, or at best just cover the symptom without treating the cause. And even when they help - what are the side effects you might get??
So it's a hard path of self discovery and then self discipline to find the source in ourselves and then treat it. I am lucky in that like Joe Rogan I found my path to treating it. I guess you still have to find yours :( Either alone or with the help of some professionals.
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Hey.
So, I’ve been trying not to overeat the last few days lol. TRYING.
I’ve been doing a spring clean and charged up my old dusty phone from 2-3 years ago.
Going through old photos and realising I looked great and was an amazing person before I left life get to me and let negative people drag me down. Back 2 years ago, I believed I was still fat and on review, my whole body was skinny and my hard work had paid off but in my head back then, I started to believe I was still fat as my relationship pulled me down. I was happy and was having fun. Old pics of me and my ex showed we were chalk and cheese but I thought I was the problem. We just weren’t a good match. I look back at my friend pictures and realised how we were just all having fun but after avoiding them for so long, I feel the damage is done. It’s amazing how you can look back at a period of time and see things differently now. Hindsight is beautiful. I deserved better.
Time to soul search and find that fun happy girl again and stop letting life get the better of me ☺️ I was extremely hard on myself.
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