Stress is notoriously known to cause a multitude of health issues, one of them being weight gain. The interesting part is that this can happen even when there is no major shift in your dietary habits. What makes it worse is that stress can increase your food cravings, specifically for unhealthy food types, leading to an increase in weight.
Let's delve into how chronic stress can lead to weight gain.
How Stress Triggers Hormonal Shifts Leading to Weight Gain
Stress triggers a series of reactions in our bodies, affecting numerous systems. When under stress, the nervous system pushes the body into a fight-or-flight mode, leading to increased heart rate, enhanced senses, deep breathing, and adrenaline release.
The hormone cortisol is then released, which replenishes the energy used up during the stress response. Ideally, when the stressful situation subsides, the body should return to its normal state, and cortisol levels should decrease to pre-stress levels. However, continuous stress can keep cortisol levels high, disrupting the body's normal functions and potentially leading to weight gain among other health problems.
Stress Alters Eating Habits
One of the main reasons why stress leads to weight gain is because it alters eating habits. Chronic stress can bring about significant changes in behavior that directly lead to weight gain. These changes include emotional eating or binge-eating, opting for fast food, and developing a preference for unhealthy, sugary, salty, or fatty foods. It's common to see people choosing unhealthy food over healthier options when they're stressed.
Stress Slows Down Metabolism, More So for Women
Stress also negatively impacts metabolism, particularly in women. A study conducted at Ohio State University found that stressed women burned 104 fewer calories than their non-stressed counterparts. This could result in an approximate weight gain of 11 pounds per year.
Moreover, women under stress also showed increased insulin levels, leading to more fat deposits. These fats usually settle in the abdominal area, making them hard to lose. This abdominal fat not only contributes to obesity but also raises the risk of cardiovascular diseases and diabetes.
Stress also hinders fat oxidation, the process of breaking down large fat molecules into smaller ones that the body can use for energy. When this process slows down, the unburned food gets stored as fat.
Stress Interferes with Sleep Patterns
Stress can lead to sleep disorders like insomnia, which in turn slows down metabolism. Inadequate sleep can make it difficult to maintain healthy eating habits and can leave you feeling too lethargic to exercise. This could lead to unhealthy habits like skipping meals, increased alcohol intake, following fad diets, consuming energy drinks and caffeine, not drinking enough water, and ultimately eating more. All these factors increase the chances of stress-related weight gain.
Stress Increases Cravings for Sugary Foods
Stress often leads to cravings for fatty, salty, processed, and particularly sugary foods. Have you noticed an increase in your cravings for comfort food when stressed? Sugar consumption triggers the release of feel-good chemicals in the brain, activating the reward system. This is similar to the effects of drugs. Research suggests that this brain-reward mechanism is a key factor in why we crave more sugar when stressed. This can eventually lead to sugar addiction, which can be as harmful as smoking.
