Stress eating is a pretty common practice for most people.

You wolf down lunch during your 30-minute lunch break.

You race through drive-through for a McDonald’s Egg McMuffin and wolf that down on your commute.

Your day was nuts and you can’t wait to get home and curl up with Netflix, wine, and popcorn when you finally get the kids to bed.

When you eat and feel better, it’s not your imagination!

Eating feels good because it gives you a dopamine hit and because your body has to divert resources to digest all that food, leaving fewer resources to feel negative emotions.

But when you eat in a stressful state, you’re packing on extra fat, and here’s why.

Cortisol is a hormone that’s released when you’re stressed.

One of its jobs is to ensure your body has “fight or flight” energy to navigate a stressful situation, which is does by getting the liver to release glycogen into your bloodstream. (Any extra glucose from the food you eat that isn’t used for energy is stored in the liver, as glycogen, for later use.)

Once your liver releases glycogen, it’s converted to glucose, which is an easy source of energy for your body. (Not necessarily the best, just the easiest.)

On the flip side you have insulin, another important hormone. Insulin’s job is to open up your cells so fuel–like glucose–can enter the cell and be used for energy.

If you consume more energy (in the form of food) than your cells can use in that moment, insulin stores it as fat for later use IF needed.

When  cortisol causes your blood glucose levels to rise, your pancreas pumps out more insulin to bring blood glucose back to normal levels.

Here’s how all this can lead to extra fat storage, especially around your belly.

Your tummy area has four times as many cortisol receptors as other parts of your body.

When you stress eat, not only are you forcing your body to trigger extra insulin to bring down your blood glucose levels, it’s more likely to be stored as belly fat due to all those cortisol receptors.

This is why there’s such a thing as “stress belly.” When you’re stressed, your body figures your life is in danger, so it packs fat around your internal organs to cushion them from potential attacks  (like being eaten by a predator).

If you’re trying to lose weight–especially belly fat–stress eating is one of the absolute WORST things you can do.

Find other–healthier–ways to process your stress, and do them on a regular basis. Listen to calming music, walk, pray, read, take a bubble bath – whatever’s gonna do it for you.

Stress eating may seem like it helps, but it’s packing on extra fat and straining your pancreas and liver (at a minimum).

It’s important to process stress for sure.

AND it’s important to do it without using food!