There are all kinds of stress, and everyone experiences some stress every day. However, there are certain kinds of stress that can send an emotional eater or a food addict over the edge.

One of those stressors is missing meals, not skipping meals but missing meals. The body needs nourishment at certain intervals. This varies from one person to another because everyone’s body is different.

Hormone levels are different, metabolism is different, and food requirements are different. People feel hungry at different times. Men’s bodies and metabolism are different from women’s.

One thing is constant, the need to eat when your body calls for food. The perfect time to eat is when you first feel the hunger pangs.

Where emotional eating and food addiction are concerned, the importance of eating when you are hungry is critical. If you miss your chance to eat because the meeting  or phone call lasted too long, or you couldn’t get out of some stupid conversation, you’re in for trouble.

Your body will give you a 15 to 30-minute pass and when that’s gone, panic sets in. If the body engaged in self-talk perhaps it would ask, “Am I going to get anything to eat? I’m hungry. How will I survive? Did they forget about me?”

And then the talkback. “Oh, I have an idea. Let’s store some fat just in case they never feed me again. Yeah, that’s the ticket, we’ll pack it on the gut and thighs and rear”.

Then, by the time you do eat,  you feel like you’re starving and your hormones are going nuts, so you eat but the hunger isn’t satisfied, so you keep eating and overeating. Eventually, your blood sugar balances out and you don’t feel hungry any more.

Instead, you feel stuffed and bloated, and very uncomfortable. If this pattern is repeated often enough, you will lose touch with your body’s nutritional needs and eat just to be eating.

It is precisely at times like these that we eat fatty fried foods, cheeses, breads, and high-sugar desserts and snacks. The resulting discomfort is stressful, and the tendency toward emotional eating is greater.

The best remedy in this case is to eat when you’re hungry. Take some food with you so you’ll be prepared. An apple with peanut butter, a tuna fish, turkey, chicken or egg salad sandwich with some pickle and lettuce works well and tastes great.

With so many other things to stress us out, this is one thing that can make it all better. And just wait until you see how much more energy you have.