Americans are literally running out of time. Achieving a work-life balance, which is still a luxury for tens of millions of working parents, has been overtaken by an even greater demand: a work-life-nutrition balance. Unfortunately, this increasing demand for nutrition has not been accompanied by a useful strategy that enables people to reclaim time from their harried lives.The result of this dilemma has been an additional layer of stress applied on top of an already stressful life. This has further highlighted stress as America’s top health problem something that was first brought to public attention in
early 1980s, and has since more obvious in 2 decades since then[i].
Once link between time mismanagement and stress is made – and it is virtually axiomatic at this point that this link exists[ii] -- a range of adverse health and nutrition consequences often result. The vicious cycle that ensues is harrowing and known to most people through direct experience, or via painfully seeing it manifest in life of a family member, friend, or colleague.
Stress can -- and often does -- lead to unhealthy eating[iii], which in turn, leads to even more stress because body is not receiving essential micronutrients and vitamins that it requires. While this is happening, since poor eating is often associated with undesirable weight gain, another level of psychological stress – this one associated with body image problems – is unleashed.
Although if cycle ended here this would be enough to solidify this as a major problem, it continues beyond this point and becomes worse.
This psychological stress due to body image problems/weight gain often leads to “emotional eating”. It is estimated that 75% of all overeating is result of emotional eating[iv]. This, in turn, leads to yet more nutritional deficiency, since emotional eating is typically of unhealthy comfort foods that are rich in saturated fat. This – as can be inferred -- leads to yet more stress, and cycle continues, unabated, often resulting in malnutrition, obesity, and in more cases than most average people realize, even suicide.
The almost clinical description of this negative cycle in preceding paragraphs does not remotely capture indescribable pain and suffering that tens of millions of Americans experience each day due to collision of stress, lack of time, and poor eating habits. While no description could accurately capture devastation that this negative loop causes, it is enough in context of this article to firmly declare that it is a profoundly significant crisis.
No quick-fix solution to a problem of this magnitude is possible, and any attempt for an overnight solution should be met with most aggressive skepticism. The key to addressing a situation of this immense complexity is to identify root cause, and then provide remedies that mitigate or in some cases, avoid negative loop from beginning in first place.
One of root causes of this problem has been noted already: a lack of time. If more Americans had more time, or felt that they had more time, stress associated with not having enough time would not be able to pull them under and into a negative nutrition spiral. Therefore, a solution that works on this level – level of time – is going to be help solve this problem to some extent.
