How the Pandemic is motivate you to be healthy

The American Psychological Association reports that 27 percent of U.S. adults say they eat to manage stress.
Family history, gestational diabetes, and prediabetes are risk factors for developing type 2 diabetes.
Young Americans who are overweight and living with health conditions like diabetes have an increased risk for complications from COVID-19.

For most of life, I didn’t weigh myself. That wasn’t a conscious choice, just something I never felt the need to do.

At 5-foot-3, I maintained my shorter stature by staying active. I took dance classes through eighth grade and played softball and basketball, both of which I continued to play through college as well as recreationally into my late 20s.

However, 6 months ago, at 42 years old, I found myself overweight. A year before that, my primary care doctor informed me that my fasting glucose level was 104, which means I have prediabetesTrusted Source.

The extra pounds showed up over about a 10-year period.

In 2011, my dad died from type 2 diabetes complications, a condition he developed in his mid-40s. From there, I turned to intense emotional eating as a way to cope.

Cookies, cakes, pasta: All became my crutch to lean on when the sadness of losing my father and mother (who passed away 4 years previously) became too much to bear while raising two young children.

This isn’t an excuse. Rather, it’s observation through self-reflection.

I realize now that I was always an emotional eater. In fact, it’s a behavior my dad and I shared. We’d celebrate the good times and the bad with treats and dining out at favorite restaurants.

Our behavior turned into a habit, which the American Psychological Association (APA) reports isn’t all that unusual.

According to the APA, 27 percent of adults say they eat to manage stress. Moreover, 34 percent of those who report overeating or eating unhealthy foods because of stress believe their behavior is a habit.

“Food has been a calmer and soother and source of security since the minute we were born. The minute we started crying like babies and our parents fed us, it got complicated,” Molly Carmel, an eating disorders therapist and author of “Breaking Up with Sugar,” told Healthline.

Carmel says the biochemical qualities of food, especially sugar, help flood chemicals into our brains and light up pathways that make us feel good.

“So, when we are stressed, we’d love to feel different, and food truly helps to do that,” Carmel said.