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Home Alone with Too Much Food
When a crisis hits, instinct sends us to the store to stock up. Water? Check. Ice cream? Check. Frozen lasagna? Check. Better make that double of everything, just in case. We stock our pantry, the fridge, the freezer, and the back-up chest in the garage. There is enough food for days, weeks even, in the event that, what, a nuclear bomb hits? A snowstorm traps us indefinitely inside the four walls of our home, or the coronavirus threatens to keep us quarantined indefinitely?
We react irrationally, thinking this behavior will protect us, hoping we can stay safe. Then we come home and panic because we feel out of control. It is a field day for the primitive part of our brain that functions in survival mode. It does whatever it can to try and keep us safe, to make things comfortable, to help us feel better in the moment. With the world around us in chaos, the primitive brain does not have to look far to find relief.
Food is the easiest, cheapest and most convenient way to experience short-term comfort, and because it is how most of us cope with stress, it is also an ingrained habit. Put us in the middle of a crisis, at home with too much food, and it is a perfect recipe for overeating and weight gain.
Maybe that does not matter to you. I am here to tell you that it should. The more you eat to manage your emotions, or the hardship of a difficult…
