Stress Hunger

A short choppy look in the rear view.

Stress creates hunger. When we are hungry, we tend to eat. Eating leads to obesity. Eating when stressed leads to obesity. Well for some. I was taught to eat when hungry, and stress, or my reaction to the situation was relieved by eating. Therefore I ate most of the time from age 6 to 18 when I left the home I grew up in, and that habit continued. I was raised to be farm labor. That was what I saw as my reason for existence, and that is what I was told. Not a nice outlook. My main objective was to come of age so that I could leave. I had no plan for the future beyond leaving. I knew what I did not want to do, but not what I wanted to do. Is there any doubt as to why I rate "family" so low in my priorities?

So I found a job, and another, and another, then I lit in one, where I liked the work, and became comfortable enough to realize I need education, and they helped me get started on my way. The selection was made on the basis of elimination and cost. Not on skill, desired, or interest, but on what was available. That was just before electronics, computers, and technology radically changed the world we live in.

But stress has been a constant, or my reaction to the changing situation, the desire to eat. It is just stress, but eating has always been the way that I dealt with that feeling. I have always felt pushed to do more, to learn more, to desire more. I grew up harnessing horse for light jobs, through the calculator time, computer, satellite phones, cell phones, to what we have today. The Fax has come and gone. Change and pressure to change has been considerable, and my reaction was to eat or want to eat in response to the changing situation, and I reluctantly went along, but my reaction remained. I never really saw the stress until I realized that many people just live their life without any desire to grow in productivity, or improvement, like I was trained to do, aka create a situation that demanded performance, and induce stress is myself.

And my reaction to any situation I find stressing is to eat or want to eat due to what I interpret as hunger. It was not until recently that I could see this clearly. So the real problem is my reaction to the situation, and my interpretation as hunger. Obesity is the end result. But we can cut the cycle at the situation stage, or at my reaction stage.