Pretty simple. When the going gets tough, do you start eating or does your appetite just vanish? I’m definitely in the latter category. My mom’s worried about me, but I’ve only lost six pounds in a few months, and most of it falls within my normal weight variation, so I’m not concerned.
Where do you fall?
Stress-faster is too extreme, but I do eat less when I’m nervous. A couple of years ago I was laid off for a few months and lost at least five pounds. That wasn’t entirely stress though; I was also eating less junk and starch than usual, since I had more time to cook.
I’m a stress-faster. The first thing to go is my appetite. I’ll have to remind myself to eat, even when nothing sounds good, and I have no appetite.
Total comfort-eater, sigh.
I stop eating when things get bad and always have. I have more energy and feel more powerful when I am hungry. My extreme was a very bad period 20 months ago when I stopped eating almost everything for 6 weeks. I lost almost 20 pounds. That was psychotic of course. I did discover in high school that if I wanted to perform my best at anything, I should stop eating a the day before.
I am not an anorexic teenage girl. I am a 200 pound male and I have never understood why people need to eat at regular intervals. I can easily go days without eating. The discomfort is there but it is mild compared to other things for me. The feeling of hunger gives me power and the feeling of fullness just makes me feel bloated and weighed down.
My appetite dwindles when I’m stressed or upset too. During a particularly ugly break-up a couple of years ago, I lost almost 10lbs and started getting practically scrawny.
Though for years I’ve noticed an odd thing…if I’l harried and stressed about some discrete thing - say I am driving, frustrated and getting lost or late for an appointment or something - I’ll really crave sugar. I have actually stopped at gas stations to inhale a Snickers bar. Calms me right down.
Both, plus boredom.
Actually I’d say I’m mostly a comfort eater.
Unless my life is going very well, I can rarely eat more than one meal a day. Usually dinner is my only meal. If I’m going through stress, it’s common for me to totally forget about eating and only force myself to eat when I get so hugry that it actually hurts.
I eat when I’m stressed. And bored. And lonely. And happy. The only time I lose my appetite is when I’m extremely sick, which is rare.
I can’t even imagine eating when I am stressed out. On the morning of a big meeting, I actually get nauseous seeing other people eat big breakfasts. . .
Stress faster for sure.
In fact, there’s a strange feeling you get in your stomach after not eating for 5 or 6 days that I find oddly comforting, to the point of being somewhat addictive. It’s better for me if I limit my stress, to prevent myself from becoming a total skeletal freak. 
Depending on the situation, I can end up doing either one.
Weird, I was just thinking about this the other day. I lose my appetite when I’m upset, anxious or angry and also when I’m really happy. When I’m depressed, I definitely crave and eat comfort food. A few years ago, when I separated from my husband of many years, was taking care of my Dad who was very ill and subsequently passed away, and also met someone new in the meantime, I dropped a whole heckuva lot of weight without trying. People would ask me how I had lost so much weight and I’d tell them it was the Divorce and Death Diet. I wouldn’t highly recommend it.
I completely lose my appetite when I’m stressed or excited (everything stressful goes to my stomach and has my whole life) but I eat when I’m bored.
So, both?
Both. My first reaction tends to be food, as comfort. However, if I’m really, really, really in bad shape I can’t eat at all. I can hardly even swallow. I’ve lost as much as 5 or 10 pounds in less than a week, and then gained it all back in 2 days when the crisis has passed.
Sidebar: I read a theory somewhere (as usual, no cite) that went like this: When you’re extremely stressed, or afraid, your digestion is not a high priority. You’re using resources toward generating fight/flight hormones and shorting the ones for digestion, immune system reactions, and so on. Now, if you were being chased by a tiger, that’s exactly what you’d need. However, when you get out of danger, you’d need carbohydrates to renew your strength. These have the effect of calming us down, which is also what you need to get over the encounter with danger. In current day life, of course, these reactions make little or no sense, but we still have them anyway. Therefore, in some kinds of stress, we can’t eat (because our bodies think we’re going to need to fight or run). In other situations, we consume mass quantities of high-powered carbohydrates (bunch of chocolate works nicely) to get the calming effect. Sounds good as a WAG, anyway.
You and I could be twins! This describes me to a T.
Boredom-eater, stress-faster. When I’m really nervous about something I can get physically sick at times, which certainly precludes eating (though I’m a lot better now than I was as a teen).
I’m both. I can’t eat when I’m really depressed, but I eat more when I’m just a little bit depressed. I guess it’s that when I can’t face problems, I overeat, and when I have to face problems, I under eat.
Both. If it’s just normal stress, I’m a comfort-eater. If things get really bad (as they have been recently), I’ll go through alternate periods of eating a lot and barely eating at all. The not-eating feeling that a few Dopers have described is not a comfort to me. If I don’t eat regularly, I start to feel sick. It doesn’t take eating very much to ward it off, though. Stress-fasting takes me back to one horrible summer where I was very sick and could hardly eat at all.
Jayn stole my answer. I’m pretty sure the getting sick thing has annoyed my girlfriend in the past. We went through a tough period where we had some rather heated fights. Halfway through, I would need to take a break to throw up. I’m pretty sure she still thinks it was just an excuse to get out of fighting even though she’s seen me get sick during other stressful events.
-Mosquito