Stress can affect your ability to lose weight. Working out daily, attempting to eat good healthy nutritious meals and live a healthier life needs to include the control of stressors to be effective for weight control.
How Could Stress Be Stopping You from Losing Weight
Stress affects the body in various ways. One of the body’s reactions to stress is that the adrenal glands begin to work harder in that fight or flight response that gives you that kick of adrenalin during stressful or fearful times. The other effect of stimulation of the adrenal gland is that it produces excessive amounts of cortisol. Excess cortisol can cause weight gain or belly fat because it causes muscle tissue loss, increased insulin resistance, decreased insulin sensitivity and disrupts the hormone balance of the body weakening the immune system.
Stress can also interfere with your ability to lose weight because stress often leads to overeating or comforting ourselves with comfort foods that are usually high in sugar and carbohydrates.
Is Stress Stopping You from Losing Weight?
Stress is part of our everyday life. There is physical, emotional and mental stress. The cause of stress can be any number of things or a combination of many things. Some examples of situations that may be adding to stress in your life include your job, your family, school, not eating enough or an improper diet, not getting enough sleep or unhealthy relationships. You may not even realize that some of these things can add to the stress in your life. Take some time and evaluate the stressors in your life. Keep a journal if necessary to help determine when you feel stress and why you felt it. If you are working out routinely, eating a healthy diet without cheating and still not losing weight, there is a good possibility that stress could be stopping you from losing weight.
How to Stop Stress from Stopping You from Losing Weight
- To help reduce the amount of stress that is stopping you from losing weight there are some things you can do.
- Make sure your get sufficient sleep, the quantity does not matter nearly as much as the quality of the sleep you get.
- Do not attempt to starve yourself, eat an adequate amount of calories each day. You can spread this over 6 small meals throughout the day if you prefer. This method actually keeps your metabolism working more efficiently.
- Avoid activities that can increase stress such as smoking, drinking and the use of drugs.
- Learn some relaxation therapies such as yoga or pilates, meditation and deep breathing or tai chi.
- Soak in the bathtub with some relaxing aromatherapy to help relieve stress and promote relaxation.
The most important thing you can do is to try to identify the source of the stress and work towards a solution to reduce the amount of stress you experience daily.
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