Role of Stress on weight management

Role of Stress on weight management
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How Stress can influence Weight Gain

We all have heard the slogan for weight loss that calories in must be less equal to the calories out. What if you adopt a minimal calorie diet and your weight doesn’t shift? Although you have to consider the basis of calories in and calories out, there are more factors that impact weight loss, such as stress, exercise, sleep, and weight set point.

Stress has become a widespread part of our lives. When we’re under stress, we are most likely looking for comfort foods. Chronic stress can trigger Depression. Comfort foods can release dopamine which rewards our brain with pleasure. This is one of the reasons that we look for comfort foods when dealing with negative feelings.

When we are under stress the brain releases hormones through the hypothalamus pituitary adrenal pathway. This pathway causes adrenal glands to release the stress hormone, cortisol. Cortisol tells our body to fuel up for a challenge, encourages us to look for quick energy, calorie high foods.

Our stress response is often weakened by high-sugar and high-fat foods. Stress hormones lead to the accumulation of belly fat, which releases chemicals that cause inflammation and resistance to insulin, resulting in excess weight.

Stress management technique

We may not be able to prevent all stress-causing conditions. Stress is an aspect of everyone’s lives. You may become better at reacting to stress by identifying the triggers. Learning stress management techniques is essential to improve our responses to stress.

  • Find a purpose and meaning to your life
  • Spend time to build relationships with friends and families
  • Practice gratitude every day
  • Build a positive outlook and optimism in life
    • Our negative self-talk and thought prevent us from achieving goals. By converting our negative self-talk into positive statements we gain confidence and inspiration to overcome any obstacles.
    • You can view stress positively by paying attention and transforming your reaction to adversity.

These factors influence many hormones and chemicals that regulate our metabolism and body composition, in addition to our food choices.

Turning Negatives Into Positives…

Just as negative self-talk has a crippling impact on your life and job, constructive self-talk has a liberating effect. There is an easy two-part mechanism for turning negative thoughts into positive thoughts

  • Decide that you are going to replace your negative self-talk with positive thoughts

you can do this first by being aware of your negative self-talk and then by making a deliberate effort to turn it around. Then start repeating this to yourself until you begin to believe it then it will be real

  • Don’t let others to influence your self talk with their negativity

Negative self talk is also a habit of thought that has been picked up by a parent, acquaintance or coworker. The next time that someone gives you a negative opinion do not agree with him or her mentally. Instead affirm constructive self talk. Here are few negative statements that we often here from others,

  • “I don’t think it’s going to work, do you?”
  • “I can’t trust him, do you?”
  • “It’s a bad day, isn’t it?

You should try this technique in your daily life. In your self-talk, turning more powerful negative terms to more neutral ones will potentially help neutralize your experience.

Practising Gratitude

Why is gratitude important? The simple act of experiencing gratitude has a lot of beneficial advantages. The practice of concentrating on what you have rather than what is lacking in your life is to foster gratitude. Another way of minimizing your stress level is the weekly habit of writing what you are grateful for in a journal.

  • Experiencing gratitude will improve your mood and lower your levels of stress, lower your blood pressure and improve your immune system.
  • And how are we going to make the most of this activity? Well, if you’re new to this habit, start by writing down things for which you’re grateful. If it is possible take a picture of the type of things for which you are grateful for. While you are writing down and take pictures, take few moments to really experience the gratitude that you are thinking about.
  • Experiencing admiration will also make you feel a stronger social bond, which has a whole host of positive benefits.

Exercise to Reduce Stress and enhance your metabolism

Exercise balances many of the regulators of our hormones and immune system. It can decrease both cortisol and the damaging inflammation caused by stress.

How to Add Physical Activity to Daily Routine

Americans spend more time sitting down than ever before, and experts believe our bodies are not getting enough exercise. It is not normal to sit all day and research has found and continues to find evidence that prolonged sitting can cause all sorts of illnesses, including obesity, diabetes, cancer, heart attacks, etc.

It is from these light movements throughout the day that we burn the most calories rather than from exercise because most people only spend less than 10 percent of their day exercising. If we can increase these everyday light activities then calories burned from these activities add up to more than from exercise. Here are some ways to increase activities:

  • During lunchtime, go for a walk, walk around the block.
  • Take stairs wherever possible
  • If you have a desk job, then set an alert to take regular breaks ( at least at every 60-90 minutes or less). Keep a water bottle at your desk only halfway full so you have to get up often for refills and walk to the water cooler.
  • At your desk, try to do a simple stretch/exercise.
    • Move your chair back away from your desk at the start of each hour and perform a squat for 20 seconds, followed by 10 full squats, repeat. In order to remind you to get up every hour, set an alert on your phone!
  • Try to stand up more whenever possible, during conference calls, taking phone calls
  • If you spend time watching TV, try to do few tricep bench dips at any commercial break and feel the burn, or even better go out for a walk or bike ride.
  • Are you attending a long conference call or webinar, then make use of your dumbbells, do bicep twists, tricep extensions, and shoulder presses.

These activities will really make a difference to get the body going. Each movement matters, so make the most of it.

Role of Sleep on Stress

The average adult needs 7-9 hours of sleep. Sleep deprivation may increase hunger, level of cortisol, and decrease satiety.

In Summary

Cortisol, “the stress hormone,” causes us to search for quick energy carbs and calorie-dense comfort foods. Stress can contribute to an increase in belly fat. By practicing optimism, gratitude, and a purpose for our life can help us to strengthen our response to stress. Exercise will lower stress (cortisol), increase our metabolism, and reduces harmful inflation. For adults, the optimal amount of moderate-intensity aerobic exercise (e.g. brisk walking, swimming, or dancing) for most days of the week is 30 minutes or more. The recommended number of times a week for strength-resistance exercises (e.g. push-ups, weight lifting, or planks using body resistance) is at least twice as much as possible.

References

Dr. James Levine, in his new book titled “Get up! Get down!”, talks about how he came to the scientific conclusion that we are being killed by our chairs and what can be done to stop the danger. So the obvious solution is to move around, by taking walks after meals, for example, something that Levine writes for every meal that he does.

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