This has been a stressful week for me. A lot of stuff going on with some travel, some talks to give and some deadlines to meet. So naturally I have been wanting to eat a lot. I’m trying very hard to not eat every time I want to because I am trying to lose weight. Add more stress which adds more desire to eat. Why does stress make people hungry? I think I figured it out.
We all know about the basic fight or flight response to danger. Our basic primal instincts come over when there is something to dear and we figure out is we can/should run or we must/should fight. I think there is a third response – feed.
If we are under stress but there is no obviously way to fight or take flight these same basic primeval instincts come to the conclusion that there must be a shortage of food in the works. So since there is food available now we should eat it. The body at some subconscious level decides that we need to fatten up for the coming shortage. The body is looking for a simplistic answer. Modern stress seldom responds to simple solutions though.
So it should be “fight, flight or feed” that we talk about. What do you think?