Most days, our battle with stress begins shortly into our morning commute and doesn't end until we've read the latest dread news on some mobile device just before we nod off. Throughout the day we try music, meditation, exercise – they all serve to beat back the stress monster for a short time, but nothing can slay it.

We also turn to food when our nerves on our edge; each of us has our go-to “comfort food” for tough times. This can be a dicey habit, however, as when you are stressed, your body produces adrenaline and cortisol. These hormones make you feel more hungry more frequently, and encourage fat storage, respectively.

Worse still, some of our comfort foods may be secretly stressing us out! If you want to avoid this vicious cycle, make sure to strike these foods from your stress menu – or even altogether.

If it contains caffeine, keep it at arms length when you are stressed. That double mocha-choco-frappe-latte-chino or 24-ounce Monster energy drink may be what your anxious self thinks you need to cope, but you'll just be setting yourself up for a crash landing later. Whatever initial lift these drinks may afford, the exhaustion, irritability – and subsequent extra stress – they hit you with later aren't worth the earlier euphoria.

The same goes for alcohol. You may be in the habit of hoisting a frosty cold one after (or in the midst of) a particularly stressful day, but don't confuse that buzz for sweet stress relief. Alcohol actually triggers the release of more stress hormones, which put your system under additional strain. Alcohol also has a depressive effect on mood, further aggravating the stress pile-on.

When we were small children, our parents would often dry our tears by plying us with cookies and candy. So it's no wonder that, as adults, many of us will reach into the cookie jar when everything around us is going all Red Wedding. There's even some science to support this: a study showed how pure sugar reduces cortisol levels, in a way that artificial sweeteners, like aspartame, do not. But that same research also noted that the metabolic-brain-negative feedback pathway that is affected by sugar “may make some people under stress more hooked on the sweetener and possibly more vulnerable to obesity and its related conditions.” In other words, if you habitually reach for sweets and carbs when you are stressed, you are more likely to become addicted to them all the time.

Finally, processed foods, already brimming with chemicals and often free of any nutrients at all, are also loaded with cortisol-triggering sugar and sodium. So next time you're stressed and are looking for a sweet snack, grab some dark chocolate instead of a bag of pretzels. It will actually lower your cortisol levels.