Wellness Wednesday Beware of Stress Eating

Today for Wellness Wednesday brought to you by Medical Center Hospital, we are taking an eating tip from Mission Fitness.

An added bonus of being a member of Mission Fitness, is that they provide great tips for healthy living, including, nutrition, exercise, and over all good health.

This week we are going to take a look at stress eating and how negatively it can affect you.

New research suggests that for a day after being stressed out, people have slower metabolisms and burn fewer calories. The findings suggest that regularly eating high-fat meals after being stressed could lead to additional weight gain, the researchers said.

Stress eating tends to be associated with reaching for high-fat comfort foods that everybody knows are unhealthy. But it's not just the calories consumed during stress eating that negatively impact one's weight – stress itself could be throwing off metabolism, too.

"When you're feeling stressed and depressed, really keep an eye on what you might be reaching for as your first choice. Keep healthy snacks in the fridge that you can grab easily because those are the times you are less likely to want to prepare something," said study researcher Jan Kiecolt-Glaser, a professor of psychiatry and psychology at The Ohio State University. "People can't easily avoid stress in their lives...but it's recognizing it and trying to change behavior around it."

Source: livescience.com and prevention.com