Exposure to inescapable shock typically reduces eating and body weight in rats. The present study examined the modulation of stress effects by prestress diet and poststress sugar availability. Maintenance on a high-fat, high-energy food attenuated stress-induced weight loss and anorexia and increased high-energy food selection when a low-energy wet mash was the only alternative. Access to sugar after stress also reduced short-term weight loss; among rats maintained on high-energy food, body weight was spared absolutely. The dependence of stress effects on pre- and poststress diet alternatives may speak to individual differences in the stress-eating relationship in humans. More generally, these results support a conceptualization of stress in terms of metabolic challenge and the integrated reorganization of energy regulatory processes.