Binge-Eating and Stress Vlog: If Monkeys Can, Why Can't We?

What do you eat when you're stressed out?
Everything in sight? "Comfort foods"? Junk, and lots of it?

Zoo-keepers watched how monkeys reacted to certain foods, and how their personalities influenced how and when they ate. From their observations, we can also learn about eating, stress, and dieting.



After watching that, your first thoughts might be
"See, it's just instinct to eat that way when you're stressed. So, it's allright if we all eat like that on our bad days."

Here is the danger in thinking like that:

1- Monkeys exercise all day long, every day. They live to play. We do not. Monkeys can easily burn off those extra "stress calories". Americans do not respond to stress with extra exercise.

2- While it might be okay to eat less healthy foods once in a while, we're not. Americans are eating like this all the time. The typical American diet is just like this "stress-overload" diet, high in fat and sugar.

3- The food fed to the monkeys was not your typical junk food: it was safer. The high-fat and high-sugar foods fed to the monkeys were not processed, or loaded with preservatives, chemicals, and trans fats. There is a big difference between dried banana chips and death-packed nacho chips.

Dieting Dangers!
We can also learn something about stress and eating habits, and dieting. We should...
Avoid Dieting under Stress!
You may be setting yourself up for failure! If you are under great emotional stress in your life, Reduce the Stress First, before you diet.
Then, when you can manage your stress down to a healthy level, think about those healthy lifestyle changes.

And the "easy-fix" for permanent Weight Loss and Stress Reduction? EXERCISE!

For more info on this topic, visit the Higher Lifestyle blog at www.higher-lifestyle.blogspot.com