Dr. Pamela Peeke on the National Body Challenge Stressed spelled backwards is desserts

"Stressed spelled backwards is desserts. I discovered this in 1991 while doodling on a piece of paper waiting for an experiment to be completed in my lab at the National Institutes of Health. I laughed out loud, and made it a mission to figure out why people eat under stress. That’s how I wrote my first book, Fight Fat after Forty: The Stress-Fat Connection. Just remember, it’s not tuna on a bed of greens you reach for when you’re stressed. Stress pushes you to eat refined sugars and fat. The solution is to learn to nip it in the bud before the raging stress appetite gets hold of you."
Practice Safe Stress

In the past few decades, with the rise of cell phones, email, the Web, laptops, Palm Pilots and "Crackberries", we’ve evolved into human beings that are on 24/7. To see how far we’ve come - so fast! - consider this: there wasn’t even the term 24/7 ten years ago. The quality and quantity of the stresses in our lives have changed dramatically, but our bodies’ response has remained the same for a million years. And that, dear friends, is a big part of why we’re presently in so much trouble.

All of us are now constantly dealing with irritating traffic jams, annoying interruptions, and endless global competition resulting in corporate restructurings and layoffs that create increased workloads for some of us and low paying jobs or unemployment for others. Not to mention, we’re flooded with so much information that we’re paying “continuous partial attention” to everything, a term (coined by my friend, former Microsoft executive Linda Stone) that describes how we are all constantly scanning the environment, rather than focusing on any one thing. This, say scientists, negatively affects our brain’s capacity to learn and recall information later.

Information Overload, Anyone?

The amount of information the world produces doubled between 2000 and 2003 to 5 exabytes of information yearly. Five exabytes is equivalent to 37,000 new libraries the size of the Library of Congress.

AOL blocks 780 million pieces of junk e-mail daily, or 100 million more e-mails than it delivers.

Bottom line: We’re under siege by mostly unimportant data. We need to focus and prioritize in order to manage stress.

 Next: We're also working a LOT more than we used to...

We’re also working more. Americans are working more than medieval peasants did, and more than the citizens of any other industrial country -- almost nine weeks per year longer than folks in Western Europe. Work hours are now up to 1978 hours/year on average, an increase of one week more than in 1990, with managers and professionals increasing the most. This is only office hours, so it doesn’t include time worked on weekends, or at home, cars or airplanes on laptops, cell phones, and e-mail. Combined weekly work hours for dual-earning couples with children rose 10 hours per week, from 81 hours in 1977 to 91 hours in 2002. How do these numbers relate to you? How much are you working?
What about time off? U.S. workers average a little over two weeks of vacation per year, while Europeans average five to six weeks. Many of us get no paid vacation at all and more and 1/3 of us don’t take even our allotted vacation time because of “too much work.” A recent study concluded that “Americans are the most vacation-starved people in the industrialized world.” How much vacation have you taken recently?

Some economists have argued that we are all overworked because as knowledge workers, so much of what we produce is not tangible—like a car or a meal—and therefore can’t be easily measured except in hours worked. So we all work too much in an attempt to prove our worth. That’s why taking no time for yourself has become a badge of honor. Who will be at work first? Who will be out of there last? Do you play that dangerous game? Many of us believe all this work is a good thing. I had a patient who looked at me the other day and told me, “Well, I took my first vacation in five years. And it took SO long to catch up when I came back I shouldn’t have gone in the first place!”

Stressed About Stress

62% of people say work has a significant impact on stress levels.
73% name money as their number one stress.
54% are concerned about the level of stress in their everyday lives.

Bottom line: This is why it’s imperative to practice your A2’ing (adapting and adjusting) every day so that daily stress doesn’t turn into distress and what I call Toxic Stress (any stress that becomes chronic and ongoing and is associated with feelings of defeat, helplessness and hopelessness).

Next: Working with no time off has serious health consequences.

We work too much and too long. Working with no time off has consequences. In one large study, overwork (defined, by the way, as over 45 hours every week—how much more are YOU doing?) is associated with an increased risk of high blood pressure, heart disease, fatigue, depression, musculoskeletal disorders, chronic infections, diabetes, and other general health complaints. Other research has found a link between chronic stress and metabolic syndrome, that dangerous cluster of conditions including inner belly fat, insulin resistance, high cholesterol and high blood pressure that increases the risk of heart disease and cancer, especially colon cancer. Mandatory overtime now costs industry as much as $300 billion a year in stress- and fatigue-related problems.

It’s also making us fat, or at least women. A British study discovered that working long hours increases women’s, but not men’s, consumption of high fat and high sugar snacks, and caffeine (and cigarettes for smokers), and decreases their exercise time. And it’s not just more work, but stress itself that’s causing these negative effects on women. Even one stressful event, like a blown deadline or important meeting, was linked for women to greater snacking on unhealthy food and fewer portions of healthy foods such as fruits and vegetables