Foods can relieve stress...

Some people reduce their stress by over eating, some people such as myself reduce stress by under eating to gain control within their lives again, we all have our own ways of dealing with stress, be it drinking, treating yourself, shopping all can come down to psychological issues.

We should really be helping stress issues by replacing them with healthy ones instead of unhealthy ones! When feeling stressed it is advised that we should not involve food. Foods act like a stimulate, such as caffeine, which can trigger off stress. Drinking green tea helps, as they are rich in bioflavonoids that help in combating stress and depression!

Food and drink like coffee, tea or chocolate should be eaten in limited amounts. Stress can disrupt our blood sugar levels which is why we should avoid food that will disrupt our sugar levels. So we should be eating whole natural foods containing fibre which stabilizes our blood sugar levels. This in turn help prevents stress. Dark green leafy vegetables, are great for stress reduction high with sources of B-complex vitamins and whole grains for this same reason.
The times we eat our meals are also important, one of the most important guidelines is:

• If you are going to do something very physical eat more
• Eat less when your are not going to be doing much physically afterwards
• Eating too much before you go to bed could interfere with your sleep making you in turn more stressed.

This is avoiding nutritional stress, like if you skip lunch then exercise you are likely to crash later on!

A bad habit I have been known to do in the past but the fact is you need the calories to burn and give you energy!

Basically its common sense and about having a diet that will stabilize your stress levels!