TORONTO – If you’re making a beeline to the vending machine after a stressful meeting or when your boss piles more work onto your desk after a long day, you could be eating your emotions.
Finnish researchers have brought the concept of “emotional eating” into the cubicle in a new study that suggests women suffering from work burnout turn to gorging on food to relieve stress.
Even if they’re not hungry, women who are stressed, bored or anxious tend to overeat while clocking time, the study, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, says.
Emotional eating and uncontrolled eating are already concerns that have seeped into mainstream media with Hollywood portraying women dealing with break ups by overdosing on ice cream and junk food.
But scientists at the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health sought out to investigate how women’s weight and eating habits changed if they were affected by work burnout.
About 230 women between 30 and 55 years old were studied in the report. The women were all employed when they completed surveys on job-related stress and eating habits.
Behaviours that were considered in the study were emotional eating, which is when respondents ate when they weren’t hungry, and uncontrolled eating, which is when hunger doesn’t subside or respondents kept eating until there was nothing left on their plates.
Results showed that 22 per cent of women had some degree of work burnout and the group, as a whole, scored “significantly higher” with both habits than their counterparts who didn’t have the weight of work stress on their shoulders.
“Those experiencing burnout may be more vulnerable to emotional eating and uncontrolled eating and have a hindered ability to make changes in their eating behavior,” lead author Nina Nevanpera wrote.
“We recommend that burnout should be treated first and that burnout and eating behavior should be evaluated in obesity treatment.”
While the study noted that the effects of work stress didn’t necessarily hurt women’s weight, emotional eating in the long run could be a risk factor for obesity.
“Work permeates our lives,” said Dr. Sherry Pagoto, an associate professor of medicine and a clinical psychologist at the university’s Weight Centre, who talked to Reuters. She was not involved in the study.
“People may be in a job where they’re unhappy and eating can become one of the few pleasures in their lives,” she said.
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