A recent study that was published in the journal Behavioral Neuroscience has indicated that stress along with dieting can cause overeating.

The study was actually conducted on rats, however, many people will probably see themselves in this study, I know I did. The rats were put under a great deal of stress and deprived of food and then they exposed the rats to chocolate and “Big Surprise” the rats overate the chocolate.

Another interesting thing was when they took food-deprived rats and rats that were well-fed and presented them with food. When the food was “palatable” (tasted really good!) both sets of rats ate almost the same amount but when presented with “bland” food the rats that were well-fed ate very little. See that is the problem that we have with chocolate and brocolli (not that I am like former President Bush and I don’t like brocolli but its not chocolate you know!). Stuff that tastes too good is just too easy to overeat!

Also, when the researchers looked at the anticipation factor, or how excited the rats were before they ate, the rats who were food-deprived were much more excited than the well-fed rats regardless of how tasty the food was.

So, try to limit stress if you are trying to lose weight and if there is some food that you just love and will binge on-say “no” at the first line of defense–Don’t buy it!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 23rd, 2005 at 7:47 pm and is filed under Nutrition, Weight Loss. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.