Lately have had several conversations with clients about stress in work and life in general, and how it affects weight loss. Although some stress is actually good for you, when you are stressing everyday consistently this is harmful chronic stress.
Stressing for prolonged periods of time puts your body at risks of many diseases, lowers your immune system and for fitness sakes it makes it difficult to lose weight.
Your Hormones on Overdrive
When we are stressed our bodies produce a stress hormone called cortisol. Our bodies trigger cortisol for many reasons for example when we are in danger, stress from work demands, stress from school, stress at home and many more. The body reacts by increasing our blood flow, changing our metabolism speeds and many other changes. At a hormone and metabolism level your body starts to act differently when you are constantly stressed, as a result it causes your body to gain weight because of all the stress.
Your Metabolism Changes
Metabolism plays a key role when trying to lose weight or tone up. All of us at one point of our lives have been under some kind of constant stress like studying for exams or finishing project deadlines at work. Have you noticed that even when eating the same amounts of food you might of gained more weight then usual? As I stated earlier, this stress will produce cortisol and excessive amounts of cortisol can slow down your metabolism causing weight gain or making weight loss even harder (Eating Bad). Those of you who are constantly surrounded by stress usually make the excuse of “I have no time to exercise” which is not good for your health!
No exercise + Being constantly stressed = A thicker you. Do the math.
Your Eating Changes
Stress also causes emotional eating or some would call it “cravings”. Let me ask you this, would you rather have a nice cold beer and maybe some chips or would you choose a water and salad instead after a long day of work? I know most of you would want to drink that cold beer and chips! When you start craving more for fatty, salty and sugary foods after work it is a good way to tell if you are under chronic stress. You need to find a way to lower this stress or weight loss will be long, grueling and demoralizing on the scale. Also because of stress your chances of picking up some happy food (fast food aka McDonalds) on the way home increases. If this sounds like you, make a change!
Too much stress can affect your blood sugar levels that can make you more lethargic, which give you mood swings but most importantly cause health problems. Trust me on this one, as a Cancer survivor, the one and only reason why I think I was sick was because of stress. Make a change in your life before it is too late!
It is very weird sometimes how the body works. It’s like it wants to punish you for being stressed a lot. Prolonged stress has been proven to change where we store fat and linked to larger amounts of abdominal fat (The most undesirable spot).
The only good thing about knowing all this information is that now you know some changes in your life that have to be made. Thank God we have abundance of ways to reduce stress.
Ninko is a Personal Trainer, Cancer Survivor, Basketball Fanatic and the President of Nitro Fitness Plan.
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