If you are to face a stressful situation – an important meeting, a heart-to-heart talk with someone you don\’t like, but you have to meet – you may feel like you need something special to calm your nerves. Most people in such situation grab a piece of chocolate or a cookie. Don\’t worry if you are among them, using food to lower one\’s stress level is a common and effective method of coping with stress. Provided of course that you won\’t overdo it.
The problem with using snack foods and candies to cope with stress is that they can\’t really solve anything. While they work just fine in the short-term, the problems that cause stress do not disappear. And if the stress is a long-term one, snacks become problem themselves. You start overeating, because you feel stressed. Eating starts to be habitual and soon after you start gaining weight and multiply your problems instead of limiting them.
Stress overeating is a serious problem in many jobs. One of them is truck driving. As drivers are always on the road trying to get cargo to its destination on time, the stress levels are very high. Many drivers cope with it by eating to calm down – and in a year or so they find out that while they still have to cope with the same stress, they are twenty pounds heavier than before.
Eating food provides some measure of comfort and improves your mood, that\’s true. There are countless mothers who have a candy or a piece of chocolate every time when children start fighting or when they don\’t know an answer to children\’s questions. The problem is that while it makes them feel better, it does not solve any problems: children will still be fighting and asking difficult questions. In case of long-term stress, eating is a short way to gain weight. A lot of weight.
So, what can we do if the stress can\’t be fought using candies? How can we protect ourselves from stress? Then answer is simple: we can\’t protect ourselves from stress, but we can fight it. Find the real source of some particular problem and solve it. This will make you feel a bit better. Then find another one, solve it and feel even happier. And so on, and so on, and so on until you become as relaxed as on a sunny beach.
The Author: Andrew John writes about health related topics that matter most and that are of concern in todays world. For more information on Stress Management and Natural Stress Relief , just click on the links.
