
Why stress causes people to overeat - al_ramich
https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/why-stress-causes-people-to-overeat
======
colechristensen
Completely fails to answer the question 'Why do people stress eat?'

As close as it comes is "people who responded to stress with high cortisol
levels in an experimental setting were more likely to snack in response to
daily hassles in their regular lives than low-cortisol responders"

So there's a statistical association between high cortisol responses and
snacking in response to stress. That is not "why", it's a correlation, and
meaningless to an ordinary person.

------
phs318u
If "stress" = "worrying about (something that may happen in) the future", then
mightn't 'over eating' be a primitive physiological response? e.g. similar to
how 'threat of imminent attack' -> 'fight or flight', perhaps 'threat of
something bad in future' -> 'better pack on the kilojoules now in case we
can't secure an adequate food supply'.

~~~
plaguuuuuu
IMO more likely to be emergent behaviour. Stressed people generally have
issues prioritising difficult long-term goals over tasks that yield short-term
gratification.

~~~
al_ramich
so true. Stress leads to burn out state which has to be one of the biggest
productivity issues. The body and mind go into this odd state where they are
looking for instant small boosts to feel good. Food is an obvious feel-good
with many obvious 'next stage' boosts that people opt to get 'rewards' from.
You could write the same article about alcohol, excessive gaming or excessive
social media consumption. Personally, keeping an eye on the level of burn out
is one of the most important lessons so far.

------
Hydraulix989
I have the exact opposite problem -- when I'm stressed, I do not eat at all,
so I lose weight.

~~~
bionsystem
That's actually covered in the article. Stress induces under-eating in the
short run (loss of appetite) and over-eating in the longer run, when cortisol
starts to take a toll on you.

~~~
Hydraulix989
I have had situations where I had been stressed for weeks and months at a
time, and I never noticed a shift.

