How to stop stress snacking

Life gets stressful and although there are many different ways to cope with stress, sometimes a snack of the not-so-healthy variety feels like the only cure. We spoke to dietitian and personal trainer at Aquahub and Aquanation to get his tips on how to manage your stress snacking.

What happens to your body when you stress 

Before we dive into your stress snacking game plan, let’s first understand what happens to your body when you’re in a stressed state. You’ve probably heard of the hormone cortisol in reference to stress. Manning reckons cortisol actually gets a bit of a bad wrap. 

“When it comes to cortisol it’s not just released when we’re stressed and I think it gets a bit of bad press in that way,” says the dietitian. He explains further that cortisol actually opposes melatonin, which is often referred to as the sleep hormone. “It’s responsible for being a bit of a wakeful hormone and from the moment we wake up and sunlight hits our eyes we start to produce more cortisol.”

The balance between cortisol and melatonin essentially forms our sleep cycle, “cortisol wakes us up across the day and starts to inversely come back as the day goes on and melatonin rises and makes us sleepy,” the dietitian clarifies.

So yeah, cortisol is a good thing. That is until it becomes extremely excessive and in really stressful situations “that’s where you might see some high cortisol levels,” says Manning. He adds that in these instances another hormone comes to the party, Ghrelin which is the hunger hormone (hands up if you’re picturing a hungry gremlin.)

“Leptin is released when you’ve had a meal and you’re satisfied, however, the issue with stress is it can deregulate those things and you can get an increase in amount of ghrelin released,” says Manning. And it’s with that imbalance where those cravings start knocking at your door.

Is stress snacking a real thing 

For some people, yes. “Food can be a coping mechanism for some people and it’s definitely a real thing and it has that psychological element but it also has a biological element to it as well,” the dietitian confirms.

To understand how cortisol and food come together when we’re stressed, Manning refers to caveman times. “If you think back to caveman times where if you were stressed after being chased by a lion for example, that cortisol level is up and you’ve probably burned through all sorts of nutrition and energy.”

The personal trainer explains further that in that instance, reaching for something that’s not necessarily the healthiest choice is actually a survival mechanism. “Those cravings for foods that are sweeter and have a higher fat content are actually really useful because they serve a good purpose, because if we’re more geared to go for those types of foods we’re more likely to survive.” 

So essentially, when we’re stressed your body automatically goes into survival mode, so it’s very common to source food to survive the situation.

How you can curb your stress snacking 

If you’d prefer not to derail your healthy habits, Manning has some great tips. Firstly, get some sleep. “Once your sleep is broken or it’s not high quality that’s where you can run into biological problems in terms of hormone released the next day so you’re fighting against those.”

Another aspect to consider is your tastebuds, the dietitian explains that those turn around every two weeks so if you can train your tastebuds to reach for healthier options when you’re stressed you could be back on the healthy track.

Manning says another way to avoid reaching for something unhealthy is to make it a little harder for yourself. “Try and create a bit of friction between you and a chocolate bar or whatever you’re trying not to have,” he says.

The personal trainer suggests tuning into your snacking to help you eat healthy even when you’re stressed. “Being mindful is important, take stock of each of your senses while you’re eating, what you can taste while you’re eating, what it feels like, that can help put a stop to that mindless eating.” For Manning, this might help you realise what you’re eating in the first place.

Above all, Manning suggests understanding and addressing the cause is the best solution overall.