Is Stress Getting In the Way Of Your Weight Loss?

Is Stress Making You Fat

In today’s society and culture we are exposed to stress minute by minute, hour by hour and day by day which turns in to the obvious weeks, months and years. The question is how much stress and how long will it take for it all to add up and cause you a problem with your weight and mental ability to cope with situations.

How we perceive, respond and internalize stress plays a big part in our ability to handle it, but before we get into to this to far let us look at what counts as stress.

Your job

The day to day rat race of meeting deadlines, being told what to do, Working under strip lighting, sitting in front of computers, email, telephone calls, faxes, rush hour/commuting, coffee and tea with a treat, relationships etc.

A big part of how stressful your job is depends on whether you like what you do and whether what you do sits ethically well with you, but let’s not get to deep on that one, I don’t want you to quit your job because of me!

Family Stress

Does your family cause you stress, juggling jobs with responsibilities for the running of the family (cleaning, DIY, social engagements, Children’s activities etc), Kids, ailing parents, unsupportive partners, bill payments etc etc etc!

Lifestyle stressors

Traffic jams, irregular sleep patterns or not enough sleep, chemical toxicity from all the cleaning agents and products that we apply to our skin and the surfaces of our homes as well as ingest through bad dietary choices. Then we have all the small things that we place importance on such as our mobile phones, a soap opera, drinking alcohol each night and being glued to computer screens, but don’t unstick yourself from your computer just yet I have some important information to give you!

Dietary stress

Chemical toxicity, processed foods, unknown food intolerances, poor dietary choices made daily, not enough water, vitamins or minerals

Stress reduction is absolutely essential to achieving emotional and spiritual health, leading you to having physical health and well being due to you not squeezing your adrenal glands as hard or at the very least, giving them a day off from time to time.

Why is this Important to You and Your Weight Loss?

The adrenal glands were only designed to work for short periods of time during time of stress such as running away from a big animal that is trying to eat you or when you were defending the family cave.

The use of the adrenals would then be followed by a long rest. In today’s environment the adrenal gland never get time off, the rest phase as we have so much fake stress.

Yes your stresses are stresses and not fake, but they are not fighting for your life stresses requiring a flight or fight response from the body. The body does not understand this and therefore produces cortisol every time you get stressed, just as it would if you were fighting for your life.

Over active stress responses can bring on depression, anxiety, even panic attacks, with under active responses being associated with the feeling of fatigue, lethargy and apathy. Bearing these symptoms in mind, I would like to ask you a question….

When you or people you know feel the following states what do you or they do;

DEPRESSED – FATIGUED – APATHETIC

It has been my experience working with men and women over the last 10 years that they tend to eat!!!!

I feel depressed so I have a chocolate, a glass of wine or crisps

I feel tired so I drink coffee and have a biscuit

Don’t feel lonely or singled out if you do react this way, because I do to and now looking back on a period of depression that I went through a couple of years ago I can see how I made the situation worse and how the situation lasted a lot longer than it needed to because of the food choices that I made when I felt down….. Those of you who know me really well may know what I’m talking about, for the rest of you I’ll tell you the story when I know you a bit better.

Ok, So I feel a little down, I eat a little chocolate or some crisps or even have a couple of glasses of wine or a feel real tired at work and go for the coffee. The problem is that these foods all cause you to release insulin to mop up the excess sugar, insulin gives your adrenal glands a little kick to produce cortisol and so we store the sugar as fat and become more depressed as our adrenals can’t put out any more cortisol to keep us functioning. We get more stresses due to feeling of guilt having eaten stuff you said to yourself you would not eat and you put on a pound that week stressing you out about your weight. The adrenals finally give up and you become unable to cope suffering some form of breakdown or burnout syndrome or you move on to antidepressants which have their own set of health problems.

That was a little bleak wasn’t it….

So I ask you, are you stressed, is it making you fat or stopping your progress on the diet or exercise plan that you are trying to follow?

I don’t want to keep you to long so I’m going to write a part 2 in a couple of days giving you some strategies for decreasing the stress in your life, helping you to gain control of your diet, your life and your weight…..

So until next time

CHILL OUT!

Keith Tucker
Expert in exercise and nutrition
07989587621
keith@absolute-training.com
www.absolute-training.org