yourself reaching for the cookies
when you’re feeling tired, cranky,
or just kind of down. (Remember,
cravings are strongly tied to
emotion.) Over time, as your
brain continues to create new
links between “cookie” and
“feeling better,” the association—
and your wanting for more—only
continues to grow stronger.The last nail in your stress-cookie coffin:
The stressed brain expresses both a strong
drive to eat and an impaired capacity to
inhibit eating. You may not even want to eat
the cookie, but because your ability to not eat
it is impaired, you sort of have to. You tell
yourself you’ll have only one, but under
stress, you’ll probably end up eating the
whole bag—which, in turn, makes you pretty
stressed-out.