While the foods we eat are critical for managing weight, they are only part of the challenge. Often underestimated are the effects of stress, exercise, and sleep. Stress influences the hormones and chemicals that control our appetite and metabolism.
Calories in must equal less than calories out, right? Hasn't this long been the mantra of weight loss? But what if you follow the calorie restricted diet and your weight still doesn't budge? Unfortunately, this simple rule of dieting fails to take into account three of the most significant missing links that also affect our weight: stress, exercise and sleep.
In addition to our food choices, stress, exercise and sleep influence many hormones and chemicals that control our metabolism and body composition.
Stress has become a common part of our lives. Many of us are familiar with reaching for comfort foods when we are under stress. But the question really is why we are driven to do so?
The first reason is intuitive. Chronic stress is unpleasant, it can even cause depression.
Comfort foods release dopamine which rewards our brain with pleasure. Reaching for comfort food is a way of self-medicating against the negative feelings that come with chronic stress. However, there is a physiological link too between craving comfort food and stress.
Under stress, the brain releases hormones via the hypothalamus pituitary adrenal pathway. This pathway causes adrenal glands to release cortisol, also known as the stress hormone.
Cortisol tells our body to fuel up for a challenge, to prepare to fight or flee in case we encounter a bear. It drives us towards seeking quick energy carbs and calorie dense foods, but there's no bear or need to escape in our modern world.
Instead, we pack on the unused calories.
High fat and high sugar foods also inhibit our stress response.
Dopamine released from eating these foods happens to be a stress recovery chemical.
It down-regulates the hypothalamus pituitary adrenal pathway to
turn off the stress response and brings the body back to its pre-stress balance.
So, we're driven to eat comfort food under stress not only to soothe ourselves against the negative feelings of stress, but also to chemically dial down our stress response.
Cortisol further inhibits weight loss by creating a vicious cycle of weight gain.
In combination with other hormones including insulin, cortisol causes fat from other areas of the body to redistribute as belly fat, a possible reason being that deep belly or visceral fat is more readily converted to energy than fat in the thighs or buttocks.
Visceral fat however is an organ. It releases hormones and chemicals that cause inflammation and insulin resistance. In turn, these compounds further promote weight gain, fat accumulation and slower metabolism.
The damaging effects of stress occur not from being exposed to stress, but in proportion to how we respond to stress. Having skills and tools for managing stress is
an integral part of preventing and controlling weight over the long term.
That doesn't mean you need to eliminate stress from your life. Stress is inescapable and avoiding it is not always in your control. Instead, you can work on getting better at handling stress. Fortunately, there are specific proven habits and behaviors any person can learn to get better at stress.
Here are some tips:
Optimism: we can learn to perceive stressful situations in a productive way, as a challenge rather than a threat.
Gratitude: practicing being thankful for what you have by expressing thankfulness and appreciating the simple gifts in life, or the beauty in nature, can reduce your cortisol level.
Meaningful connections: nurturing, supportive and trusting relationships together with empathy cause to release the cuddle hormone, oxytocin, which moderates our stress response.
Sense of purpose and meaning: finding a sense of purpose can help you sail easier through life's daily ups and downs.
Physical activity: any form of exercise or movement helps increase the production of endorphins which improve your mood. After a long walk in nature or several laps in the pool, you'll often find that you've forgotten the day's irritations and concentrated only on your body's movements. You may find that this focus on a single task, and the resulting energy and optimism, can help you remain calm and relax you.
There are many other ways we can make stress work in our favor rather than wreak havoc on our hormones. The important thing to remember is that managing
weight involves far more than balancing calories. You need to create a lifestyle that balances your hormones, which then naturally balances your weight.
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