I have a theory.

When life gets stressful, my stomach apparently sends out a group text to every carbohydrate within a five-mile radius.

It is the only explanation.

On normal days I am perfectly capable of making sensible food choices. I can admire a salad. I can eat one square of dark chocolate. I can even walk past the cookie jar without so much as a lingering glance.

Then stress arrives.

Suddenly I am standing in front of the refrigerator with the door open, staring into it as though something new might have evolved since I looked six minutes earlier.

Perhaps birthday cake.

Or leftover pizza.

Or a nice rotisserie chicken that’s somehow learned to make itself.

Stress has an uncanny ability to convince us that the answer to emotional turmoil is found somewhere between the potato chips and the leftover Chinese food.

Science says it is because our brains are looking for a hit of dopamine, that lovely little burst of everything will be fine.

My brain, however, seems to believe the correct therapeutic dosage is everything in the pantry.

Then pre, post and just plain menopause join the party.

Hormones go rogue. Sleep packs its bags. Patience files for divorce. Suddenly your body is craving sugar, salt, bread, chocolate, pasta, and anything that is not nailed down. The only thing it does not crave is kale.

Poor kale. It never had a chance.

The cruel joke is that we are rarely feeding hunger.

We are feeding anxiety.

Frustration.

Loneliness.

Boredom.

That email.

That phone call.

The evening news.

Food becomes emotional support with calories.

I have started asking myself one question before reaching for the white fudge stuffed with caramel. Am I hungry or am I auditioning for My 600-lb Life because someone annoyed me?

Sometimes I really am hungry, but often what I need is a walk. A conversation. A good book. A dry cappuccino or perhaps the radical notion that not every bad day requires an emergency meeting with the pantry.

Don’t misunderstand me. I have absolutely no intention of living in a world without chocolate. That sounds less like wellness and more like a punishment devised by medieval monks.

The goal is not perfection.

It is catching ourselves before the pantry starts looking like an all-you-can-eat therapy session.

Now if you will excuse me, I am off to eat a peeled carrot because you cannot be too careful these days with Cyclospora on the loose.

FYI, the grotesque pig in the hideously ostentatious golden Oval Office has slashed billions of dollars in public health funding and fired thousands of workers at federal health agencies. He and his repugnant, rich cronies have also curtailed FoodNet, stopping the program’s mandatory tracking of cyclospora and five other pathogens that together kill hundreds of people in the U.S. each year.

I am desperately trying to have DoorDash deliver a basket of assorted greens and fresh berries to the White House. I will keep you abreast of my hopefully, eventual success.