Lose the Stress to Lose the Weight
While those looking for ways to lose weight tend to concentrate mainly on their diet or take up an exercise activity, many miss another important factor in the cause of their weight gain.
Stress is a big contributing factor in the problems associated with body weight fluctuations and by reducing the amount of stress in your life can have a profound effect on your weight as well as your overall health.
More Stress Can Mean More Weight
The American Journal of Epidemiology has published some enlightening information about this, which demonstrates that higher stress levels can result in weight gain.
What is more, the excess pounds are more likely going to be stored as what is now understood to be dangerous belly fat.
The reason for this is that stress hormones in the body such as cortisol become released when we are faced with situations that are unresolved. This triggers inflammation along with a systemic immune response, which is a natural way for the body to protect itself.
In fact, stress creates a powerful physiological effect on the body that in turn, fuels the storage of abdominal fat and creates inflammation throughout the body.
This unresolved stress is a major cause of weight gain via several physical manifestations that have been shown to alter the body's metabolic function. But it doesn't have to be this way.
Junk Carbs
When people are under stress, they tend to habitually grab for unhealthy junk or fast foods that are high in carbohydrate and unhealthy refined sugars. These promote a surge in blood sugar and insulin resistance.
The result of this continual snacking leads to metabolism related diseases such as diabetes.
It also means the excess calories pack on extra weight as fat around the abdomen.
If you really want to combat the tendency to snack on these bad foods, you need to make sure you keep them out of your home to avoid the temptation in the first place. Then make sure you eat a healthy diet or use one of the commercially available convenience diets like Nutrisystem, Bistro MD or something similar.
Stress reduction techniques and changes to lifestyle have also been shown to reverse these negative effects. This can allow you to take control and enable you to enjoy healthy weight loss under your terms.
There are several techniques for reducing stress levels in the body, such as yoga, meditation, self hypnosis, Tai Chi, controlled breathing and the many forms of moderate exercise. You should make it your mission to decide which of those would suit you best and then get started on at least one of them right away to reduce your own stress levels.
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Posted on Fri, 20 Aug 2010 in News | 1 Comments
1 thoughts on "Lose the Stress to Lose the Weight"
Isaac says:
How right you are about keeping stress under control for keeping the weight down. Stress is a killer in more ways than most people realize and your article highlighted the need to keep stress out of our lives if we want to stay slim and healthy! Exercise is an excellent way to de-stress and I spend a lot of my workout time using kettlebell training, as an alternative to old fashioned types of workouts. They get me in great shape too!
Anyway, thanks for the work you put into this site!