We all know that feeling of feeling sad, or anxious, and reaching for food. But did you know looking at other people on Facebook can make you feel sad?
“No one joins Facebook to be sad and lonely. But a new study from the University of Michigan psychologist Ethan Kross argues that that’s exactly how it makes us feel. Over two weeks, Kross and his colleagues sent text messages to eighty-two Ann Arbor residents five times per day. The researchers wanted to know a few things: how their subjects felt overall, how worried and lonely they were, how much they had used Facebook, and how often they had had direct interaction with others since the previous text message. Kross found that the more people used Facebook in the time between the two texts, the less happy they felt—and the more their overall satisfaction declined from the beginning of the study until its end. The data, he argues, shows that Facebook was making them unhappy.” Read full article here.
Today for some reason, well to avoid other boring work I had online, I looked up an old boyfriend. This is from over 25 years ago.
I have looked for him before, but never found any thing online about him. I actually thought he might of died, sad and alone. Now why did I think that? I had good reason to think that. He was a compulsive gambler, and a bartender, who loved to party. He had 1 kids and 1 on the way, last time I talked to him, with short term girlfriends/one night stands type of things, before he was 26. But thank goodness after we had broken up. I was sure he was doomed. He did end up marrying one of the waitress from a place where we all had originally met, and she was a very nice catholic girl, so I thought that might save him.
He got married the same year I got married. I have been divorced now for 14 years and still single by choice. Usually I feel very happy with my choice, but then I found the ex. Well looks like he moved to Vegas! I am not so sure how that helped his gambling problem, but he is still married to the same lady, and they have 2 girls and what I could tell from FB the other two kids of his are girls too and they all look like one big happy family.
The kids are all adults now, like my own children, and he looks good, a little chubby but good, and his wife looks good too.
I still find it strange that I can shift through someones life on FB like this. I have nothing personal on my FB. I teach internet safety, and I if any of my old boyfriends wanted to find me , they would not be able to, because I have never used my legal name online for anything.
Anyway I felt sad and a little defeated after I saw all this and felt like he had successfully managed to stay married and even with what I knew were major problems, cheating, extra kids outside relationships, and a gambling problem, it looked like he has a successful family and life.
I guess this why FB can make people feel depressed. Another article here about this.
“Interestingly, the so-called “Facebook effect” that Kross describes is not related to baseline mood or loneliness. “It’s not the case that people use Facebook more when they feel bad,” he says. “It is something unique about Facebook use that is making people feel worse.”
“When you’re browsing Facebook, you see people depict glowingly positive stuff.”
His wife posted a lot of AA type of saying about let go, you cannot control things and so forth, so that made me wonder how that all turned out, and his daughters had lots of photos of them drinking and captions like “What the “smith” family does best!”.
So the message is, we really don’t know what is going on with people, and Facebook makes it all look wonderful.
Do you find Facebook makes you feel sad or like a loser, or jealous or other negative feelings sometimes?
Does that trigger you to eat? How do you overcome that? Please share your coping skills or strategies for avoiding eating when upset in the comment section. Thanks!
Helpful ideas and tips to overcome stress eating.
By Joy Bauer
Find alternatives to eating
Prepare a list of activities that are personally appealing and handy. Perhaps go for a walk, call a friend, listen to nostalgic music (anything that brings you back to a happy time), take a hot shower or bath, clean your house, polish your nails, surf the Internet, schedule outstanding appointments, watch something on TiVo, clean your purse, organize your closet, look through a photo album, etc.
Keep a food journal
Logging your food will help to identify your toughest timeframes. It will also make you accountable, so perhaps you’ll be less apt to reach for unnecessary food.
Three-food interference
Make the commitment to first eat three specific healthy foods before starting on comfort foods (i.e., an apple, handful of baby carrots and a nonfat yogurt). If after that, you still want to continue with your comfort foods, give yourself permission. However, most of the time, the three foods are enough to stop you from moving on.
Exercise regularly
Daily exercise relieves stress and puts you in a positive mindset, which provides greater strength to pass on the unhealthy fare.
Get enough sleep
Research shows that sleep deprivation can increase hunger by decreasing leptin levels, the appetite-regulating hormone that signals fullness. Furthermore, with adequate sleep, you’ll be less tired and have more resolve to fight off the urge to grab foods for comfort.
