When I'm stressed, I completely lose my appetite. I don't remember to eat; I don't want to eat; and when I do eat, the food doesn't taste good, even though I can't point to any objective difference from the way it normally tastes.
A substantial minority of people I know are like this; the rest tend to want to dive into the cookie dough ice cream. So, discuss. Are you a stress eater or a stress anorexic? And does anyone have any idea why the difference might have evolved?
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I am the same but have no insight why the difference.
Eat much less when stressed - but binge-o-rama when the stressor is removed.
Stress non-eater. When anyone asks about weight loss it's always the misery diet plan.
I am a stress eater. But it's because when I feel myself getting stressed, I try to do something to calm myself down. I used to smoke, but I don't do that anymore. So I have a snack.
On the other hand, I know a lot of people eat a lot when they are sad. I am the complete opposite. I can't eat when I'm sad.
I'm a stress eater (& drinker). Nothing like a little snack of gin marinated olives to relieve a little stress.
Not sure about why the difference evolved, but I'm a definite stress-anorexic. And depression-anorexic too (which makes me sound like I have lots of issues, which isn't true) - that's thankfully very, very rare. I'm 5' 10" and only 125 lbs, and I can drop 5 in a couple of days of stress. For a guy.... uh, I'm skinny.
Stress anorexic.
When I graduated college, I gained 30+ pounds.
I'm thinking about getting my MA to lose weight.
Stress anorexic here! Come final exam time, I *always* lose weight (and my face breaks out). Sooo nice to know there are kindred spirits out there.
And when am I stressed, when I do eat, I tend to eat much healthier foods than I normally do (lots more fruit, for instance).
It's actually when I'm bored and completely relaxed that I tend to eat too much. Too much time on my hands, I guess.
I eat in response to many feelings, including stress. Really eating is just comforting in general to me, which is a problem.
The only situations in which I can't eat are: 1) when I was suffering really bad morning sickness for about 10 weeks of my pregnancy; and 2) when I'm too hungry. Sometimes when I go too long without food and the hunger turns to pain, I can't eat once I have food in front of me. I take two bites and can't eat anymore. Do other people have this problem?
Under stress, I cannot shovel in the cookie dough fast enough. Complete binging.
John Wright says: "I'm 5' 10" and only 125 lbs, and I can drop 5 in a couple of days of stress. For a guy.... uh, I'm skinny."
That's an understatement.
Project: due in forty minutes.
Status of Code: Not really certain, but certainly not done.
Junk Food on Desk: Piled high.
Real Problem: Reading blogs while needed to debug data access layer.
I want to say I'm a stress anorexic, in that I have trouble deciding on food or enjoying it when stressed, but when I notice this, consciously indulging in something ridiculously expensive or unhealthy does wonders. Do other non-eaters not have that pattern?
I definitely eat.
My wife shares Megan's aversion to food when stressed.
We both worked long hours this year. I grew. She shrank.
Hopefully, work will go more smoothly this coming year for both of us. We'll revert to our respective means.
How much I eat doesn't change when I'm under stress, but I do tend to eat worse (order out rather than deal with cooking/cleaning dishes) and smoke a lot more.
I'm a stress anorexic, but I don't think it's an evolved response in my body at all. As a little tyke I had constant motion sickness on the way to school, as a teenager I had ulcers, and through most of my life I've had IBS. I've been conditioned to associate stressful events and thoughts with stomach pain the likes of which minor hunger pangs could never match, and eating never seemed to make these things any better.
I haven't been stressed lately, so I really had to to think about this. I'm usually a stress eater, unless the stress is bad enough to upset my stomach in which case I'm a non eater.
I too lose my appetite under stress. I haven't the faintest clue the reason, as I would imagine a raised metabolism from stress would make one more hugry.
Perhaps under stress we try to accomplish more tasks, making us "forget" we are hungry? Just a WAG.
Big time eater. The fatter I am, the more stress I'm under. No two ways about it.
Color me envious of those of you in the opposite camp.
Hey, please check this out:
http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,24336544-23272,00.html
Even so, your brain must be 3 or 4 times the size of mine.
Neither, I'm a stress exerciser
I'm a stress eater. I just had another horrible call with Verizon customer service, and had to go out and get a meatball sandwich.
stress anorexic.
There's been two or three times in my life when I was under such enormous stress that I had to vomit every morning. So, I was a stress bulimic, too.
Moderate stress induces in me an overeating tendency, while extreme stress induces in me an undereating response. The influences on the connection between stress and eating behavior might be roughly half genetic and half environmentally conditioned. A person's eating behavior might be correlated with serotonin and adrenaline levels in the brain and such levels might have a complicated relation to stressors.
Stress anorexic. Pure conjecture but...
I know I lose my appetite because it feels like my body is in a fight or flight mode--I psychologically just can't eat anything or I'll upset my stomach. I'm that way before a big speech or presentation, I can't eat a thing and refuse to until I'm done.
Stress is the bodies reaction to a negative situation, it's just instead of a saber-toothed tiger it's financial troubles or something similar. So I always figured my reaction was like a massive fight or flight response spread out across a longer term stressful situation.
I think that makes sense...though I have no explanation for the stress eaters out there.
Depends on the kind of stress. Busy stress, I eat. I also eat badly because fast food is, well, fast.
Horrified/depressed, I can hardly look at food. I lost several pounds after 9/11 and after the OKC bombing.
I'm afraid I just like food too much. I eat more when sad or stressed, but also when happy and celebrating. The only time I eat relatively less is when I'm sort of middle-of-the-road blah, (and even then a bit too much).
Never been sure why I seem to like food more than others, everything from high-end exquisite haute cuisine to low-brow greaseball fast food. Thus, I've struggled with my weight throughout my life.
A futurist that I read whose name escapes me now predicts that in the next ten years, a pill will be developed to allow people to eat as much as they want and still not have any excess body fat. I sincerely hope he's right. That pill may just save my life.
I like to kick, stretch and kick when i'm stressed.
There's plenty of reason why stress might change your diet in the literature. For one thing, your brain uses up a lot of blood glucose, and stress also ups your metabolism. So it's likely stress eating specifically targets carbohydrates, as it seems from the stack of personal stories above. Easy to digest stuff.
Stress is often a longer-term reaction than flight-or-flight so maybe the paralysing extreme stress of a big presentation or a 9/11 which induces stress anorexia (stressorexia?) is an acute appetite suppressant, whereas longer-term low levels of stress cause your body to adjust to such stress and emphasize calorie intake.
A mildly educated guess form a Psych Grad Student...
I'm definitely a stress eater. When I'm under stress there is no cookie or muffin that is safe from me!
Other than that I don't have any information on the causes. However, as this political campaign has demonstrated, why tell the truth. So, I believe it is the Flying Spaghetti Monster that causes us to either overeat or under eat when stressed. It/he/she designed us this way. For some mysterious purpose of which we don't know. That's why its mysterious!
Another thing to add, too, is stress responses are probably highly conditioned, so it depends on what has satisfied you before. Comfort food probably triggers an established relaxation association.
Stress would tend to draw resources away from digestion, so you'd think that short-term eating of anything but simple sugars would be a bad idea.
That being said, I'm sure the amount of available fat and glycogen stores has a lot to do with how your body handles long-term stress, too.
Sometimes when I go too long without food and the hunger turns to pain, I can't eat once I have food in front of me.
The same thing happens to my wife, she can get herself so hungry she feels nauseous. Eating usually makes her feel better, but it's usually hard to convince her that's going to be the case. For me, I'm a social eater. When nobody else is around, I eat much less. Our family get-togethers are always centered around the food, so it seems like a conditioned response to me.
As a son of a psychiatrist and a Greek, I can tell you it's mostly to do with what role food played in your home growing up. If you associate food with the warmth of your family, nice dinners with the family, and food even took on the form of a hobby (as it did in mine) I can assure you, food will be a big thing for your stress.
i am the same way... i can never eat when i'm stressed... i'm not sure why that is not the norm for people under stress. when a person is stressed, bodily functions begin to shut down, so I have no idea why some people are able to pig out when stressed
For me, it depends if I can do anything useful about the stress.
If I need to get a project done, and I can work on it, I don't think about food one way or the other. If I need to get something done, but can't work on it, I eat.
If I can't deal constructively with the stress, I need to do something. It is better for all of us that I eat rather than check people's shoes and moisturizers for explosives.
I am a stress eater, but only around friends. If I'm alone and stressed, I'm definitely an anorexic. I think the relationship has to do with feeling more comfortable around friends.
Stress eater.
It wasn't always that way, though. Before I started smoking in my late teens, I don't remember what my response was. Once I became a smoker, I was a stress smoker.
Once I quit smoking, I started eating.
(I also chew pencils, pens, and gum like a mad man.)
I can go either way, in that stress doesn't kill my appetite, but I can put in very long hours without eating when on a deadline panic. Adrenaline, apparently, since I am otherwise prone to some rather spectacular bloodsugar crashes if I negelect food for too long.
I'm like Denise. Moderate stress; bring on the chow. Serious pain? My throat closes.
I call the latter "diet by despair."
The third way: substance abuse. I favor bourbon. It is a comfort during hurricane season.
I am not overly empathetic but Houston is about to have a problem.
If you look at the Quick Inventory of Depressive Symptomatology (self report), you will see that questions 6-9 regard decreased/increased appetite or weight. In scoring you take the highest deviation from 0 on any one of those items as a depressive item score. You could achieve the highest score (3) on any one of these items of course and still not have a positive screen for depression (a total of 10 or more is required). The clinical rule of thumb (in depression) though is that in a mild illness appetite is increased, and in a more severe decreased. As to mechanism and meaning, serotonergic mechanisms are part of appetite as suggested by the fact that chronic Serotonin reuptake inhibition therapy (e.g. Prozac or paroxetine) is often associated with weight gain apparently because of decreased satiety. This effect however may be occurring in the gut. 'Depressed' monkeys, I forget how that anthropormophic analogy is established, withdraw from fighting for dominance in a colony and the conclusion has been drawn that it is of potential survival value when faced with a 'hopeless' rivalry.
Definitely on the stressorexic side of the ledger. I wonder if it's related to what is causing the stress. Most of my stresses are very short term, relating to bad trades or other time pressured factors, and this tends to wipe out any hunger. If had longer term stress issues relating to friendship, marriage, work etc, I can imagine stewing over them with some cookies and a cup of tea.
I'm both. Mild stress tends to cause me to overeat, whereas heavy stress tends to cause the aneorexic version.
Try drinking cranberry juice; that helps me when absolutely nothing sounds goods, but I know I need something.
Also gets the taste buds going...
When I get VERY stressed (like illness in the family, or an accident, or something like that) I don't eat anything. In fact, the thought of food makes me physically ill.
Fat and happy.
Sad and skinny.
I lost 40 lbs during a custody fight, and intervention with a family member. Plus what I do eat doesn't stay down for long.
Not sure I'm one way or the other overall, but I do know when I'm nervous on a date (which unfortunately, I usually am), I can't eat. At all. This makes dinner/lunch dates kind of awkward. But I've never noticed, say, work stress affect me one way or the other.
Christina, I actually get the same thing when I don't eat for a long time...I can start a meal, but then I never make it through. And of course, I'm hungry again shortly, and I think the problem kind of compounds itself such that I eat more then I really needed, and eventually gain weight. The thing that sucks is when I'm hungry I can't do the two things most critical to me succeeding in my job: think, and at night, sleep, which is critical for my ability to think regardless of how hungry I am the next day. I think what I need to start doing is, perhaps ironically, eat BEFORE I get hungry.
Definitely a stress eater. I've gained 20 lbs in the past year, in spite of some rather active walking, due to various stresses during that period. Here's my major clue that I'm stress eating: I'm not hungry, heck I may even be full, but I find myself anxious to eat something anyway. Sigh. ..bruce..
Like several other posters, moderate stress (as well as too little sleep) cause me to eat mindlessly, but in the case of serious stress I can not eat a bite, can barely even drink water.
Hmm... I would say I'm a stress eater in very short-term situations. When I have a paper due in the morning and it's, well, 3 AM (and a phone rings in the White House) and I'm absolutely nowhere on the paper, I'll go through a whole box of Cheeze-Its and drink a can of Coke (very, very bad idea). But if I'm having a long-term stressful situation - like preparing for exams or simply having a really busy couple of weeks - my diet is great. I eat regularly, healthy, and I remember to take time to exercise. However, during relatively low-stress stretches, my diet is terrible. That's why I tend to take a lot of classes, hold an internship and partake in various extracurriculars every quarter (Ohio State still uses this archaic system). While it may lead to a few more nights of Coca-Cola and cheese crackers, it also leads to many less nights of pizza and heavy drinking.
====Cussing up a storm right now.
====Staring at an empty pint of Chocolate and Brownie Affair Ice cream
You tell me, Megan, you tell me
Stress eater. I can't even fathom how people can forget to eat, or be so busy/stressed they don't want to. I get hungry and it's like having to use the bathroom; I can't concentrate on other things until that's taken care of. It's a fair amount of effort for me to stay at a decent weight...
Exception being short-lived acute stress, where I feel like I'm going to throw up. As soon as the nausea subsides, though, bring on the food.
Stress anorexic, but it has to be extreme stress. When I get *really* stressed, the only thing I can eat is fruit--everything else just doesn't taste good to me.
Stress-anorexic here. For myself, when I get stressed my body goes into flight or fight mode so my body is telling me don't eat, run from the perceived threat which you can't do when your threat is a deadline.
Weirdly, the only thing I can be sure of eating when I'm stressed is sugared almonds.
Stress-anexoric. Plus, I turn into a terrible insomniac, and then in the time I would be sleeping, I run (extra on top of what I would normally run).
All of which means I drop weight fast when stressed, even for a scrawny runner. (Along the John Wright lines -- 5'8", frequently down to 110 when stressed.)
My suspicion is that the causation for some stress-eaters runs in the opposite direction. In other words, for whatever reason they eat too much, or too much of the wrong things ("Oh my God I just ate three slices of pie!"), and this is followed by getting stressed out over the fact they ate too much. Looking back, it's easy to forget how the chain of causation worked, and attribute the overeating to stress.
Megan, you might try adding some grapes or grape juice to those sugared almonds.
And don't you want to tell us why you're stressed?
FYI, stress anorexic. Stomach clamps up, can't even get a glass of water down. (Neck also tightens up, which spells doom and an oncoming migraine, even tougher on the stomach.)
I think stress responses are learned, and typically go to your systems greatest weakness, hence my migraines and neck pain (head trauma & whiplash in my history.)
I'm a stress anorexic who likes food and drink. So I gave up stress, I like food too much.
I am overweight to begin with, so am a stress eater. I can define my stresses really clearly, and can do nothing immediately about some of them, so the next best thing is to "get something good," which provides momentary distraction/satisfaction, but actually compounds the factors that led to stress in the first place (weight, wasting money on food).
For me, it depends on the source of the stress.
Stress via family/friends? I can't eat for days.
Stress via work/money? I clear the refrigerator in minutes.
Hi! I'm an editor for Seeking Alpha. Please contact me at your earliest convenience.
Stress anorexics represent a nonviable mutation. They'll die out in a few generations.
(BTW, stay away from Seeking Alpha, read Barry Ritholtz for more details.)
Many people associate food with happy times. People eat cake and ice cream at Birthday parties and family get togethers. Because these are happy times when people are sad or depressed they turn to these foods to feel better. Of course the food makes them fatter which makes them more depressed. My guess is that high stress situations don't make you sad or make you feel worthless so food doesn't meet your emotional needs.
depends on the level of stress for me. normal stress (e.g., exam, project due, normal relationship issues) i eat. high, knock me off my feet stressed...can't eat....
As anecdote, I am not sure whether stress anorexics really tend to be taller than average, or merely look that way; and vice versa (the opposite appearance for the opposite vice) for stress eaters.
At the level of (weak) hypothesis, the hunter-gatherer anorexics may have had a prediciliction for flight when threatened whilst the eaters tended to stay and fight. Their non-eating and eating responses would both be appropriate. Some equilibrium would arise between preferences for the two strategies. The strategy choice may no longer be very relevant, but the equilibrium persists because nothing has happened to disturb it.
Maybe anthropologists' studies of existing hunter-gatherer groups could falsify this conjecture.
Stress anorexic - didn't realize it was that common. Although for me it's only from specific, intense forms of stress (like opening night of a play) as opposed to constant work stress.
I can't eat when extremely stressed. When my wife was in the hospital, I lived on cranberry juice for a week. I've never even liked cranberry juice, but it was the only thing that tasted like food. But even work stress, I'll just kind of forget to eat for 12 hours.
I am a total stress anorexic -- I just started a new, challenging job and one of the upsides is that I've lost 5 pounds since I've started. I do forget to eat, and at 4 or 5 I'll look up and realize I haven't eaten anything all day and I won't be hungry at all.
My normal weight is not thin -- I'm female and 5'9'' and hover around 140 when I'm not under stress. I always figured that my curviness gave me a cushion to use during my periods of non-eating. I can lose 5 to 10 pounds without being under weight.
I'm in the minority too, though I had no idea stress starvers were in the minority.
Stress eater here. Stress gives me a growly feeling in my stomach that feels just like hunger. Food fixes it. It has to be real, meal-type food though. Fairly heavy "comfort food" is ideal.
I don't understand people who binge on sweets, which just make things worse.
In my trial lawyer days, I'd lose 5 lbs. a week the last week before and during trial. One four-week trial would've killed me, if I hadn't been in the relatively lower-stress job of second chair.