What I eat when I'm stressed (the honest answer, not the clinical one)
I have a pretty sensitive nervous system.
You would absolutely know that if you heard my backstory.
You would never guess it based on how I eat 99% of the time.
Most people walk around with the unconscious parts of their backstory running their current show. I've had the access and the training to apply what I know about a healthy-on-multiple-levels relationship with food and body to my own life, and I've experienced the healing effects of our most updated treatments firsthand. I have intentionally optimized my nervous system around doing What's Right For My Body, because defying it always leaves me feeling like shit (as it does all of us).
So, 99% of the time, my diet is what I've affectionately termed The Founder Diet. Smoothies with biohack-y supplement powders. Local meal delivery from chefs who optimize for portability instead of plating math. Voss glass-bottled sparkling water, or as my podcast producer calls it, "Producer Water" (because duh, manifesting ✨). Healthier versions of shelf-stable pick-me-ups. Whole-food snacks that pair macros intentionally. And always saying yes when my body asks for something different than the above, because she knows best, and she also appreciates when I intentionally optimize how I take care of us. Yours will, too.
That's 99% of the time.
The other 1% is what this post is actually about.
When I'm stressed, when my nervous system contracts around my daily choices, my nervous system’s range of “acceptable” foods shrinks, and I gravitate toward the predictable textures of my childhood. I want to feel connected to my childhood food memories. I see the same thing in my clients all the time. I find myself drawn to the comforts of predictability, consistency, a treat for my nervous system and dopamine reward center, a tool to soothe my internal cries.
That usually looks like:
- Microwavable macaroni and cheese
- Oatmeal with butter and brown sugar
- Pasta
- Pasta
- Did I mention pasta lol
- Crab rangoon
- Sandwiches (pbj, tuna salad, ham and cheese with mustard)
- Pizza!!!! It’s like pasta but a higher proportion of the best ingredient (The best ingredient is warm carbohydrate.)
- Dried fruit
- Canned peaches?????
- Trail mix with a lot of chocolate in it
- Dumplings
- Cucumber and avocado roll sushi
- Random fruits and vegetables cut up into acceptably bite-sized pieces
This list has ebbed and flowed through different phases of my life, the way these regressive comfort patterns typically do.
And then there's the other direction. When I'm in the wrong relationship or I’m not honoring myself in a given situation, I stop eating almost completely. Stress contracts me toward childhood comfort foods. The wrong relationship contracts me away from food entirely. Both are the same nervous system doing the same job in different directions. You probably do some version of this too. Most of us do.
Every one of the foods on that list has a connection to my memories, or it's my body trying to communicate something it knows in a deeper, more unconscious layer, trying to float it up to the conscious layer so I'll engage with it. All of our bodies do this. The food is the messenger.
Tell me your favorite “omg-my-nervous-system-is-contracting” foods!
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P.S. This is what psychonutrition is all about - how does our relationship with food and body fluctuate, and why?
P.P.S. If you're curious about the podcast I mentioned above, I run Hot Girl Psychology with my co-host, IFS and existential therapist and trauma-informed dark romance author, Deanna Dellia. You can find it at [hotgirlpsychology.studio](https://hotgirlpsychology.studio). I talk a ton about psychonutrition on there and how your (or your clients') eating behaviors fluctuate based on what you're internally processing with food and body at any given time.