A SIGNIFICANT cause of overeating
I arrived home from my family trip to see my newly finished kitchen floor.
It was beautiful.
I remember thinking to myself..I’m finally getting this fixer-upper to somewhere approaching respectability.
I wasn’t planning on doing the floor, but the old tiles were splintering, and with Ro Wilder crawling, they were becoming a safety hazard.
So I felt really good that everything was finished and was done really well.
Of course that was Friday Night…And this is Sunday Morning.
And this Morning this was the scene in my basement:
I’ll spare you the picture of the pool of water on the ground, but needless to say, I’m not a happy camper.
I’m also not fasting.
I WAS fasting..
In fact when I found the pool in the basement I was about 17 hours into a fast
By 20 hours into my fast I was eating.
Why?
Simple: Stress….horrible, illogical stress.
Eating will not change the fact that water seems to be flowing from somewhere (I’m guessing roof) into the house, along the support beam and finally pooling in the corner of the basement.
Eating will not change the fact that the carpet in the living room is wet.
Eating will also not change the fact that I simply can’t fix this on my own.
But it’s a stress response, and we all have it.
Luckily for me, I’m usually good at handling stress. On a day to day basis, I’m pretty stress free.
So stress doesn’t really affect my eating.
But I pity people in stressful jobs, stressful relationships, stressful life situations…because I know they are probably also overeating.
And I don’t have any reasonable solutions either.
Except for one.
If you can get rid of the stress, do it.
Quit your job, leave the relationship, do whatever needs to be done within reason.
And, if you are like me and have to wait helplessly doing your best to problem solve until the experts arrive, realize that it’s out of your control…and remember to breath.
Stress…it’s a vague thing, but I will tell you this…. In my opinion too much stress is the antithesis of Health.
A little bit of stress is good, but too much stress will send you to your grave early, and probably overweight.
Do your best to remove it from your life.
BP
P.S. If you’ve been holding off on purchasing your very own copy of Eat Stop Eat, now would be a great time to go ahead and pick it up! 
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Brad Pilon Blog – A SIGNIFICANT cause of overeating…
Weight Loss – I?m usually good at handling stress. On a day to day basis, I?m pretty stress free. So stress doesn?t really affect my eating. But I pity people in stressful jobs, stressful relationships, stressful life situations …because I know they …
I agree stress is one of the major sources of over eating and other unhealthy habits such as smoking and abusing substances. We should get rid of as much unnecessary stress as possible however we can’t always easliy rid ourselves of all stress. We can however improve our response to stress by learning healthy adaptive behaviours and looking after ourselves. I am sure Brad’s low level of stress in his life is partly due to the fact that he keeps himself at a healthy weight, exercises and has a positive outlook on life.
Brad I dealt with too much stress all of my life, tried to burn the candle at both ends and succeeded at very little except divorce (twice) drinking my way into dependence, quit that (and smoking) and started to eat my way into morbid obesity (from 155# to 305#). When we stay in too much stress for too long, we give our brain too much to do and it locks up like electronic brains do. The process of unlocking is painful, and slow, requiring (me anyway) to go back and examine why AND how I got stressed out in the first place. It usually involves my not seeing clearly when I start down the wrong road, which always means my emotions were/are clouding my judgment interfering with my reasoning. I have to stop and reset my priorities and let go of the less important stuff (at least for a while). Most of the time a break is all I need to get some objectivity, as in: just how important is it really at the moment and down the road. I am writing this more for me than for others (you) but when I calm down and unwind I can think to write like this. Otherwise I make mistakes til I’m in a corner and have no choice but to stop and reevaluate. Good post, thanks for the thoughts, just mop up the water, ventilate the area and try to find the source. It might be just a leaky pipe or trash in a gutter. I cant possibly know what needs fixing, but thinking about your leak problem allowed me to stop obsessing over mine, and I didnt eat anything while writing LOL. Thanks……Charlie
Hi Brad
sorry to see the scene down in your basement I hope it works out for you. Stress now we are talking that high breathing you spoke about is a major contributor to mine and many other peoples tight musculature. When stress kicks in my neck traps, most of my upper back tighten up then your really in the boiler room. Modern life has left us few outlets for stress, we eat and drink to help us but the food choices are always poor because we feel sorry for ourselves. This creates a real cycle of self loathing going which usually ends up with you in a bar looking through the bottom of the glass. Great post the most simple things we forget it’s good to remind ourselves of what causes destructive behaviors and how to break the cycle. Keep up the excellent work breaking the myths of diet and exercise I’m listening and learning.
Best Regards
Peter
Hi Brad.
I want to tell you that you have changed my life and I am so thankful!
You made me stop obsessing about protein, carbs, fats, calories, exercise and everything…
I have been having protein guilt, carb fear, food fear, everything for the past 1 year and seeing food as the enemy… My summer vacation was a disaster because of food choices… I actually thought my diet worked because of the food I ate and not because I ate when hungry and stopped when satisfied and exercising regularly… (Created a calorie deficit).
I am very lean right now and I’m becoming even leaner.
I love the Stop Eat Stop lifestyle and all your work, articles etc. Small quoted and paragraphs really hit me so hard that they (you) changed my life. I can´t thank you enough Brad…
There´s nothing better than sensing the freedom when it comes to food. When I read the article about what you eat, I thought damn! This is how life should be, no worries about food, enjoy the food you eat, eat responsibly and listen to your body! Eat only when hungry.
I’m so thankful!
Paul
Hi Brad,
Your kitchen floor really is beautiful; you did a great job. I was once in a flooded basement and it’s not pretty. I sure hope you can find the root of the problem quickly and get it fixed without paying out an arm and a leg.
I tend to eat over stressful situations in my life; but I also tend to get rid of the stressful situations after many attempts to fix it.
Have a nice day.
At the risk of sounding like I’m proselytizing, we all experience stress in our lives, especially in today’s hectic electronics age. However, if we think of stress like blowing up a balloon, sooner or later the thing will pop, unless we figure out a way of how to install a relief valve! The most effective relief valves that I know of, (and I’ve researched and applied quite a few), other than diet and exercise, is yoga, pranayama, and Transcendental Meditation. They are all mechanical techniques and do not require belief systems. The ideal way to live life is to not only to be aware of circumstances and their results, as Brad so eloquently indicates above, but to have the physiological ‘calmness’, or state of relaxation, that supports an expanded state of awareness. This creates a natural state of ’self-discipline’. Brad’s discovery of eat-stop-eat is very astute. After a bout of food poisoning in Thailand in ‘91, I lost 15 lbs. in 10 days and was able to lift at least twice my normal workout weight during my circuit workouts! And, the rheumatoid arthritis that I was taking gold compound shots for, completely disappeared and hasn’t returned to this day. I know that the strength I felt was due to water flushing, and sweating the toxins and mucous out of my system and allowing the Eastern concept of vital energies to flow through the subtle ‘nadis’ of my nervous system. This is similar to Eastern yogis, or martial artists, having seemingly extraordinary powers without very little muscle mass!
I know what it’s like to have water problems in the home, so I feel for you Brad. In my old condo, the ceiling in my bedroom was badly damaged due to a leaking toilet in the suite above – twice! 2 big repairs, and another place I was in had a sewage leak (yuck!) Thankfully these things can usually be repaired/restored, but it can stressful to be sure.
I can imagine how long ago when food wasn’t so readily available like it is now (back in Paleo times for example), eating in response to stress might be useful – perhaps the body would signal you to load up on whatever you could because who knows when you’d get to eat next. That would give you some fuel to handle the crisis.
I think that a lot of people walk around in an ‘alarm’ state, but they don’t realise it until they experience what it’s like to feel more relaxed. I’ve known people who are resistant to the idea of relaxing because they think they will be less productive.
Some people seem to respond to stress with an increase in stomach acid so they feel hungry, while in others it seems to shut down so they don’t want to eat. I find that I tend to respond to different stresses with one or the other, and the older I get the more I can identify which is more likely to trigger the overeating urge.
I relate to Charlie’s solution – taking a break and getting some objectivity when the urge to eat hits like that.
I have never read this anywhere, but I have found out that there are two kinds of people- those who eat when stressed and those who quit eating when stressed. I know several slender ladies who tell me that it can’t be stress making me eat because if I was stressed, I would be skinny like them. I think it is a good observation that should be researched.
I think if it has not already been done, that there should be some studies on stress and eating, in particular the kind of stress. An issue with water in the basement, maybe be from way up top, ice dam building up letting water come into the wall and lingering down a joist to the basement possibly? I have a vaulted ceilings and I had leaks in 2 separate spots, turned out to from a bad area around the chimney flashing found when they redid the roof this past summer. Water would leak in and follow a roof joist and then split into 2 directions depending on the rain fall , heavy, light etc. For the longest time it was the most frustrating thing to deal with, good luck.
Back to the stress, there are many types of stress, at least from my own experience. Some such as yours with the leak or a broke down car, they level of stress I think can produce different levels of effect on the individual (from my own experience). Maybe you and John can do some digging into stress and weight loss and gain and or stress as a motivator. I know at times when I am stressed about work, or the car, or money I tend to go to comfort food, really bad I know.
From a relationship stand point, in the past for me and others I have known, there is the stress of loss, or breakup stress. My friends (guys and girls) refer to this as the break up diet. Often for whatever reason a break up occurs there seems to be a level of stress that hits individuals where they go into fight/flight mode. I am not sure if this is something engrained in our genetics and subconsciously our body react to the loss, eating less and in most cases dropping weight due to what one could call fasting or the lack of food, mostly do to the feeling of not wanting to eat as the thought of loss makes most of us get nausea. Could this be the body recognizing that we are not fit to find another suitor and thus we know we must look better if we ever are going to find someone? On the other hand with a breakup there is the person how left or walked away, (experienced this from both ends of the spectrum), the person that walked away has a new found flight of energy. A will to workout, eat healthy, to look good because they feel better about getting out of a bad situation, or better because of new suitor in their life. Even though this doesn’t appear to be stress, could it be good stress, welcomed pressure to look good, feel good and move forward?
So in some cases stress can cause people to eat, but in others it can appear to cause them to not eat. I myself would like to be able to harness the breakup diet and bottle it up; it seems to come on fast, happen quickly, and weight loss tends to be almost instant without effort.
Brad
Isn’t it interesting how we can watch ourselves do the thing we don’t want to do during stressful moments…knowing that we don’t want to do it, but going ahead anyway. I think that part adds to the “guilt” later because we know that we know what to do.
How about this. Try to think this way about stressful situations. It’s not the thing that is the problem, it is how we think about the thing that makes the difference. If we try to think about the stressful thing as just a thing that we can choose to deal with one way or another, it may make it easier to make a better choice. Obviously, it’s better to do this intentionally, before any stressful thing is on the radar. For me, traffic incidents used to get me, but good. My heart rate would go up, swearing would ensue – you know the drill. When I intentionally thought about the fact that my reactions were only hurting me, while the perpetrator went on his/her merry way, chatting on their cell phone, I thought, enough of this. Now traffic situations are my practice field. When someone cuts me off or whatever, I think that it’s too bad they are so distracted by what ever is going on in their life that they are driving poorly, and I bless them and my defensive driving radar gets put on High. It’s amazing how much better I feel. So, try to think about a stressful situation as a practice field for how you can consciously retain your calm and sensible self – and stay away from the swearing or the cupcake or whatever your vice of choice may be. Afterward, your appreciation for not following your destructive pattern will just make you feel even better. So, a new mantra could be
“this is just a test” – let that run through your brain a few times, and then decide what to do!
Good point, Brad!
Overeating due to stress in the workplace is very common. So common, in fact, that the Occupational Health and Safety Act of Ontario recognizes it as a hazard to health. It’s labelled “psychosocial stress”… and the employer is held responsible. This is when one should take a “stress leave”.
If you’re ever at work and find yourself craving and pigging out on crap, despite your lack of hunger… you are dealing with psychosocial stress.
If you get home from a long day at work and go straight to the fridge…. psycosocial stress.
It’s funny how many people pass it off as a lack of willpower. It really is not. Don’t beat yourself up! Just remove the stressors… easy peasy
A simple fix. Most water problems are caused by improper drainage. Grab a shovel and pick, walk around the exterior of your house. Where you see that water will settle against your house, dig a furrow to a drain. When you have extra time, where possible dig a furrow around your house to drains or low points that are away from the house. This should fix your problem. At the very least you will have done proper preventative maintence. The majority of house/basement leaks can/are fixed by fixed by fixing the drainage.
Wishing you the best!
I absolutely agree. What is funny is that when I was overweight that was the problem. Since I had so much stress over being overweight, now when I am stressed out I have this different feeling in my gut. Like in trying to take control of my life, now when I stress I can’t eat anything. I wouldn’t say that I could completely fast but my calories tend to be a little alcohol, very little food, and weird food like an anorexic or pregnant woman’s diet. It goes both ways for people. Some people eat when they are stressed, which is probably because of the early humans constant stress over the need to find food and now our bodies relate stress to hunger. Or in my case now I relate my present stresses to my past stress of being overweight which leads me to starve myself when im stressed. Exercise and meditation seem to help me out when I stress. Going for long hikes can clear your mind too. Good luck on your roof!
So true. I gained 20 pounds during the first year of my daughter’s illness. You want to talk stress. That’s it, a sick child. But it’s to the point where her condition is managable and the changes we needed to make in her environment are normal to us now. I’ve started taking care of me again and am down 10 pounds since Feb 1. It’s a balancing act but it’s working.
It is all a problem of emotional pain. In life you are either happy or not happy. When you are happy you will make smart decisions about almost anything. When you are suffering any one of the many emotional pains, (stress, sadness, physical pain, grief, jealousy, anger, etc.) you are going to have the tendency of making not-smart decisions.
You may have a tremendous amount of discipline to stay on a diet for years. Eventually your emotional pain level will overflow and you will fall to temptation. That is why the Gov. says all diets and exercise programs are just a short term solutions.
The solution is so simple. (it may not be easy to get into the habit). I use a simple 1-5 scale for happiness, Minus 1-5 for not happiness. I have an alarm watch that goes off every 2 hours. On a 3 X 5 index card I note my current level of emotional pain. If it is a negative reading, it is as urgent as if I had fallen and severed an artery.
I have a list of instant happiness makers. It may be to call a friend who I know will cheer me up. I t may be a cup of hot tea. Put a comedy video on the player. You need to be constantly adding additional happiness makers to the list. Just like the Boy Scouts, “Be prepared” is the magic word.
You can only be one attitude at a time. Either happy or not happy. It is your decision. It is your responsibility. You made the decision to be happy or otherwise. No one can make you not happy.
And also you have a happiness tank. In the same way you measure your current level of happiness or not happiness, you need to be aware of the level of your happiness tank. Just like the gasoline gauge of your car, you can not go on empty. No matter how expensive the car, they all need fuel to go.
I was planning on doing happiness coaching, but my coach said there was no money in lifestyle coaching…
Sam Metz
PS we had a leaky roof for five years. My wife refinanced the mortgage to fix the roof. It hasn’t stopped raining since then. Hey, we are very happy campers!
Sweet, you put in a swimming pool!
JK, I find it’s kind of ironic that much of the stress in our lives that can cause over eating comes from the stress of trying to stick to a diet, eating healthy and all that crap. it’s an endless cycle.
I used to be so stressed about “eating right” that I would spend all of my emotional energy on what i was eating and the rest of my life fell apart. Now I have nearly no emotional attachment to food, no cravings, no “addictions” and no guilt.
Oh how great it is to be free! Our stress over food should have ended once we developed as a society to the point where most people could get enough to eat on a daily basis. But nope, we gotta make up all sorts of garbage to keep that stress level about food high.
(*sigh*)
Keep on fight’n,
The Fit rebel
Thank you, Brad, for being one of the only weight-loss “experts” to not give into complex or pop theories. Reading your blog is like a fresh wind blowing away all the half-truths, and getting to the very heart of the matter!
I have friends who have added so much stress to their lives with their complex food programs that they are not only NOT healthier, they are getting fatter as well. Since incorporating ESE, letting go of the term “bad food” and finding exercise that I enjoy, I have never been happier or healthier!
This entry is just another example of your innate ability to simplify and demystify weight loss obstacles. Please don’t ever let the pop-psychology experts get to you. Keep common sense king… it’s what sets you apart!