The facts are in. Stress causes weight gain. Most experts state there are two factors involved in the connection.
One is cortisol, a stress hormone. The other is bad behaviors induced by stress.
Cortisol’s Influence
Stress causes an elevation of the hormone cortisol. This happens when your adrenal glands began pushing out adrenaline and cortisol in a stressful situation.
This leads to more glucose poured into your bloodstream.
The purpose is to give you the energy to help you in your fight or flight response.
It’s meant to help you escape and survive a dangerous situation. The adrenaline drops, as does your blood sugar when you are no longer in danger.
This causes the cortisol to go into the top mode to replenish your energy.
The cortisol causes sugar cravings. Your body stores the sugar and abdominal fat is created.
This results in the doughnut around your mid-section.
Cortisol makes your metabolism sluggish, making it hard to lose weight.
Bad Habits
Stress can cause a multitude of bad habits including binge eating, exercising less, eating junk food, and skipping meals.
Most agree the combination of cortisol and bad habits is the ultimate culprit in belly fat.
How to Change
Learning how to handle stress better will help you in your weight loss goals. It isn’t enough to change your habits.
You must change the root cause of those habits, which is how you deal with stress.
Understanding your flight or flight response will also help you control your cortisol levels.
Doing more exercise during a time of high stress and substituting things like fruit for high-sugar items will prompt chemical changes to cortisol in your body, making it easier to lose weight and keep it off.
These are battles of those wanting a healthier weight. They can be won once you understand what is going on in your body as well as externally.
Changing your mindset to better deal with stress will go a long way to disrupting the link between stress and weight gain.
