Stress Makes Rapid Weight Loss Difficult
Your mind knows what you should do, eat, and drink, but your body craves ALL the wrong things. Starring into the pantry, you are willing your mind to overcome the desire for comfort foods such as yummy pasta, sugary treats, and tasty breads. You know you should choose the fresh vegetables in your fridge to make a salad for dinner. But, it was a stressful day at work and salad will bring you NO comfort.
If this sounds familiar, don’t worry, it is a common reality. Recent research uncovered evidence that stress can impede rapid weight loss by making it harder to pick healthy choices and maintain self-control, especially when it comes to food.
We all deal with stress on a daily basis. Managing weight under consistent stressful situations can be difficult and sometimes seemingly impossible.
The “stress hormone”, Cortisol is usually to blame for that stress-junk food connection. Research shows that under stress, secretions of cortisol increased activity in the part of the brain that processes tastiness and reinforced connections between that area and the part of the brain that regulates decision-making and value-judgements. The more stress placed on a subject, the weaker the connection between value-judgements and long-term planning became, i.e., those well-made plans to eat healthy or lose weight were suddenly a mere afterthought.
A new study reinforces previous research, showing that stress increases cravings for high-fat high-calorie foods. The lifestyle of most is high-stress and low-restoration. This equals increased weight and decreased health.
What’s the Solution to Stress-Induced Weight Gain?
Lifestyle Changes: practice coping mechanisms and stress-management techniques, such as: exercise, involved in a sport, yoga, meditation or deep breathing, and get plenty of rest. Remove temptations; do not purchase comfort foods and have them in the pantry.
Beyond Daily Stress
If you feel like you have tried every trick of the trade and the weight still won’t budge, you may be suffering from a hormone imbalance. Our bodies were made to have an Emergency system when we perceive danger. This system is called “Fight or Flight”. This system was designed to be used only at times of increased stress not 24/7. Due to the busyness of life, sometimes we live at “Fight or Flight”, and that can send Cortisol levels through the roof or it can completely fail. Either way, your body is not functioning as it should. Hormone imbalance due to stress can cause weight gain, fatigue, insomnia, depression and lowered immunity.
A Functional Perspective
If weight loss efforts elude you and you’re stressed, talk to us, we specialize in hormones and hormone therapy. Kare Health and Wellness offers advanced diagnostic lab testing to determine the source of dysfunction and works with you to develop a personalized comprehensive treatment plan that gets to the root of the problem. Managing your symptoms is not enough, improve your health and restore your life!
