Stress and Your Weight

Have you ever noticed that weight loss is more difficult when you’re under stress? Not only that, but it’s really easy to gain weight when we’re stressed too! 

Many of us think, well, of course I gain weight when I’m stressed, because I stress eat… but there’s actually more going on than that. Tune into today’s podcast as Marchelle and I talk about how stress affects the chemistry of the body and what that has to do with your weight loss journey. 

Episode Highlights: 

(08:17) Cortisol is also the stress hormone. It causes our liver to make glucose, which is blood sugar, in preparation for increased activity. Now, the interesting thing about this is that if we're not eating enough protein and we're stressed out, the cortisol that's released when we're stressed will cause us to use our lean muscle mass to make glucose.

(15:06) How do you keep cortisol levels down when you’re stressed? By following your morning routine, meditate, journal and pray, exercise and eat nourishing food. Think about the day ahead and plan, so you're not just rushing out of bed, trying to wing it all day, you're planning and you're thinking.

(24:54) I can think of one other reason that stress can cause weight gain, and that is stress eating. It's called buffering. Our primitive brains believe that any negative emotion means we might die, and our primitive brains will give us the idea to get rid of that negative emotion as quickly as possible, and we're almost guaranteed to get the urge to dive into a bowl of ice cream or popcorn. I just want all of us to recognize that this is actually a normal response of the human brain to the pain of stress.