Stress fasting under pressure: The role of demands and control on healthy eating

Stress fasting under pressure: The role of demands and control on healthy eating Gulnur Ashyrnepesova Dr. Alexander T. Jackson Stress plays an essential role in daily life, influencing physical and mental health. Many people face recurring stress cycles, like exam periods requiring a balance of deadlines and responsibilities. Over time, these cycles can become chronic stress, affecting psychological well-being, eating, sleep, and overall health. Stress often leads to coping behaviors such as overeating, reliance on stimulants, or stress fasting, skipping meals when demands and strain overwhelm. Academic and professional environments with high demands often push individuals to prioritize performance over self-care, making eating a secondary choice. This leads to irregular meal patterns that harm both body and mind. While research has focused on stress eating, stress fasting remains underexplored. (Widaman, 2014; Weaver et al., 2021). This study aims to examine whether cognitive factors help explain why students engage in stress fasting. Specifically, executive functioning will be measured in high-demand academic environments, as it plays a central role in impulse control and decision-making. When stress levels rise, weakened executive functioning may impair self-regulation, making it more difficult for students to maintain consistent eating routines (Hormann et al., 2012; O’Neill, 2020). Similarly, academic pressures may reduce interoceptive awareness, the ability to recognize and respond to internal hunger cues, which can increase the likelihood of skipping meals or developing erratic eating habits (Herbert, 2020; Robinson et al., 2021). These predictions will be tested using mediation analyses. Hypothesis 1: Executive function in high-demand environments affects impulse control and decision-making. Hypothesis 2: Weakened executive function under stress impairs self-regulation, leading to irregular eating patterns.Hypothesis 3: Academic demands reduce interoceptive awareness, increasing erratic eating habits. Participants will be recruited from the psychology research pool at Middle Tennessee State University. The measures include: Perceived Stress Scale (Cohen et al., 1983) to measure perceived stress, Multidimensional Assessment of Interoceptive Awareness (Mehling et al., 2018) to measure body awareness and response to internal signals; Emotion and stress-related eating to measure emotional and stress-related eating patterns, and Fasting Behavior Questions to measure reasons behind meal skipping. The results of this study should provide insights into why stress fasting occurs and how to develop interventions that promote healthier eating habits among university students. Ultimately, this project will contribute to identifying strategies that reduce stress-related fasting and support healthier coping during periods of high academic demand.