What does food have to do with your stress levels? More than you might realize. About 40 percent of Americans say that stress drives them to overeat or eat unhealthy foods,1 which, in turn, trigger physiological changes that can make your mood worse.
If you become ill or gain weight due to stress-induced poor eating habits, it will only make your stress worse, prompting a vicious cycle than can be difficult to break out of.
On the other hand, carefully chosen healthful foods can have the opposite effect, working to boost your spirits and even lessen anxiety. A proper diet may not only help you feel calmer but can even lessen the damage that stress does to your body.
Which Foods Are Best for Managing Stress?
When you’re under fire at work, juggling multiple responsibilities at home, or going through a difficult time emotionally, these are the foods you should reach for. Really, though, you should strive to eat these foods regularly (not just in times of stress) to help maintain mental, emotional, and physical balance in your body.
1. Dark Chocolate
If you’re one of these individuals who get a nice mood boost whenever you sink your teeth into a bar of pure, unadulterated chocolate, it is not happenstance.
There’s actually a chemical reason called anandamide, a neurotransmitter produced in your brain that temporarily blocks feelings of pain and depression.
It’s a derivative of the Sanskrit word “bliss,” and one of the great things about chocolate is that it not only produces this compound, it also contains other chemicals that prolong the “feel-good” aspects of anandamide. Chocolate has even been referred to as “the new anti-anxiety drug.”
One study in the Journal of Psychopharmacology also revealed that people who drank an antioxidant-rich chocolate drink equal to about 1.5 ounces of dark chocolate daily felt calmer than those who did not.
