The recession may be shrinking wallets, but for some it’s expanding waistlines.

A couple of months ago, the NY Times reported that candy sales were up – not fancy candies, but corner store and nostalgic varieties.  And a recent survey by Career builder showed that people were snacking more due to worries about the recession.

This is alarming in many ways.

First, eating candy is only a temporary relief of stress. Once people get on the blood sugar roller coaster that inevitably happens when they indulge in large amounts of sugar, they will alternate between euphorically happy and weepily depressed.

Second, sugar encourages many diseases to flourish in the body. It contributes to imbalances and helps create a highly acidic environment, perfect for viruses and pathogens to thrive. It weakens the immune system so that your body will have a harder time repairing damage being done to every area.

I could list about 100 different harmful things that sugar does to you, but what’s more important is finding better ways to deal with stress if it is causing you to eat massive amounts of sugar. So…

Go on a media diet – turn off the news, stay away from the gloom and doom. You will not miss anything, I promise. If something really big happens, someone will tell you about it.

Take care of yourself – make time to do things that you love to do. The things that give us the most joy don’t cost much as all to do. For example, I love to read novels, walk around my neighborhood, and listen to music. None of those things cost a lot of money but I get a lot of joy from them.

Be grateful – if you’re feeling poor and thinking poor, then you are poor. But if you start appreciating all that you have in life, you’ll never feel poor again. Keep a journal of all of the things that you are grateful for – write down a short list of 3-5 things per day.

Do this every day for a month,and I can guarantee that you will have forgotten about your fear and lost the need to snack it away.

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