KEY INSIGHT: Chronic stress fundamentally alters your biology in ways that promote weight gain, poor food choices, and declining health. Elevated cortisol increases appetite (especially for sugar and fat), promotes fat storage (particularly abdominal fat), disrupts sleep, impairs digestion, and creates systemic inflammation. Meanwhile, stress makes you crave exactly the foods that worsen your stress response while avoiding the behaviors (exercise, quality sleep, good nutrition) that would reduce it. This creates a self-reinforcing cycle where stress drives unhealthy behaviors, which increase stress, which drive more unhealthy behaviors. Breaking the cycle requires recognizing stress-eating as an automatic pattern rather than a character flaw.
PERSONAL REFLECTION: Think about your most stressful days. What do you typically eat? How do you typically move (or not move)? How do you sleep? Most people eat worse, move less, and sleep poorly when stressed – exactly the opposite of what would help. Now think about your best days when you felt calm and in control. Did you naturally make better choices about food and movement? The connection between stress and health behaviors is profound, yet most people have never consciously noticed it.
TODAY’S EXERCISE:
Today, practice catching stress in action. Set three alarms on your phone at random times. When each alarm goes off, pause and assess:
Don’t try to change anything yet. Just notice the connection between stress and cravings. Most people discover they’re far more stressed than they realized, and that many of their eating urges are actually stress responses, not hunger. This awareness is the first step to breaking the automatic stress-eating pattern.