If you do, you're not alone. The American Psychological Association (APA) just released findings of a study that reported 30% of adults say they have overeaten or eaten unhealthy foods in the past month because of stress. Another 30% of adults report skipping a meal due to stress. That's 60% of adults who are allowing their health and weight to be affected by the stress in their life. Recognizing, understanding and controlling your stress is critical to your ability to reach your goals and maintain your healthy body weight.

We turn to food because it's a sure thing. We know the end result, the feeling we will have if we do or don't consume it. When it feels like the world around us is in chaos, we're desperate to grab onto something sure and stable. Often that sure thing is food, especially comfort food. To manage stress eating or not eating, we really have to have a deeper understanding of our emotions.

Tony Robbins is famous for the 6 human needs that he's identified. They do well to help us understand emotional eating too. The six core human needs are certainty, variety, significance, love and connection, growth and contribution. The first four needs are defined as needs of the personality and the last two are identified as needs of the spirit.

In order to stop the emotional eating cycle, we have to identify which need is not being met. Once you realize that you are lonely or need some variety, you can seek out a better way to meet that need. Even better is to change your behavior and mindset to prevent the need from arising. Fulfill that need before it becomes urgent. If your need is to feel certainty, find ways to reassure yourself of plans like making lists and schedules ahead of time. This will help to diminish the chaos in your life and remove the desire to eat to feel certainty and control.

Those of you who stop eating when you are stressed are causing yourself a whole host of problems as well. When you're stressed your brain switches into fight or flight mode and will shut down all systems not vital to your physical survival. Often this causes us to not feel hunger signals. Our bodies are incredibly sophisticated computers and have an alarm system for many different threats. One is stress, another is starvation. Your body is programmed for survival above all else. If you are not eating, it believes it is facing famine and will begin to store fat, burn muscle and slow down unnecessary functions. So by allowing your stress to cause you to miss meals, you're body is under double stress trying to keep you alive and to run only the most important functions. As mentioned above, identifying the causes of stress and the needs not being met, then finding healthy ways to fulfill those needs will help you to control your eating in a more healthful way.