Why Stress Is Making You Fat

By Megan Driscoll 

You don't have to be a scientist to know that when you are under stress, healthy eating habits often go out the window. Suddenly you crave comfort foods or find yourself over-indulging as a means of coping with your anxiety. Stress interferes with normal sleep patterns, leaving you feeling groggy. When you are tired, you are more likely to reach for sugary, starchy foods because your body craves immediate energy. While none of those things are good for your health, with vigilance, they can be controlled. What you may not realize is there is much more at play physiologically when your body senses stress. Stress triggers your body's natural alarm system, calling for a surge of hormones to be released as fuel for the potential danger it perceives. This response is designed to protect you, but when left on constant alert, it takes a serious toll on your health, not to mention your waistline.

Part of your fight-or-flight response, this physiological phenomenon was an important part of survival for many of our ancestors who hunted their own food and often had to escape predators. However, such threats are rare these days. They have been replaced by heavy workloads, financial concerns, relationship conflicts and other complexities of our daily lives. Unfortunately, the body does not differentiate physical danger from emotional woes.  Any form of perceived stress triggers this chemical response.

When the alarm bells go off, your heart rate and breath quicken, stamina is increased and you become more alert. Blood flow to the brain becomes quicker, blood sugar rises to increase energy and blood is sent to the extremities in order to increase their strength.  Your adrenal glands release a surge of hormones, largely adrenaline and cortisol, which enable the body to fight or run.

Cortisol is the body's primary stress hormone. In small doses, it boosts energy for survival, provides higher memory function, increases immunity and lowers sensitivity to pain.  Cortisol increases glucose in the blood stream and enhances the use of glucose in the brain. At the same time, cortisol inhibits the digestive system and other systems that are not essential for the stressful fight-or-flight reaction. Adrenaline stimulates the brain and body to react. It spikes heart rate, elevates blood pressure and boosts energy supplies.

When your safety is threatened, this chain of events serves you well. In day-to-day life...not so much.

With constant exposure to stress, the body has a hard time turning off its fight-or-flight response. Long-term overexposure to hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline is very disruptive to all of the body's processes, putting you at increased risk of many health problems.

Increased presence of cortisol in the bloodstream is especially dangerous because it encourages the body to store fat, particularly in the abdominal region in and around the internal organs. Cortisol not only leaves the body feeling hungry, but craving high fat and simple carbohydrates for immediate energy. When cortisol is present, testosterone, the body's muscle building hormone, is decreased. Decreased levels of testosterone lower the body's muscle mass, thus slowing metabolism. None of which are good for your bottom line.

  Click here to continue reading

Dr. Weil's Anti-Inflammatory Diet

Courtesy of Dr. Andy Weil  

It is becoming increasingly clear that chronic inflammation is the root cause of many serious illnesses - including heart disease, many types of cancer and Alzheimer's disease. We all know inflammation on the surface of the body as local redness, heat, swelling and pain. It is the cornerstone of the body's healing response, bringing more nourishment and more immune activity to a site of injury or infection. But when inflammation persists or serves no purpose, it damages the body and causes illness. Stress, lack of exercise, genetic predisposition and exposure to toxins (like secondhand tobacco smoke) can all contribute to such chronic inflammation, but dietary choices play a big role as well. Learning how specific foods influence the inflammatory process is the best strategy for containing it and reducing long-term disease risks. 

The Anti-Inflammatory Diet is not a diet in the popular sense - it is not intended as a weight-loss program (although people can and do lose weight on it), nor is it an eating plan to stay on for a limited period of time. Rather, it is a way of selecting and preparing foods based on scientific knowledge of how they can help your body maintain optimum health. Along with influencing inflammation, this diet will provide steady energy and ample vitamins, minerals, essential fatty acids, dietary fiber and protective phytonutrients.

You can also adapt your existing recipes according to these anti-inflammatory diet principles:

General Eating Tips:

• Aim for variety.
• Include as much fresh food as possible.
• Minimize your consumption of processed foods and fast food.
• Eat an abundance of fruits and vegetables.

Caloric Intake:

• Most adults need to consume between 2,000 and 3,000 calories a day.
• Women and smaller, less active people need fewer calories.
• Men and bigger, more active people need more calories.
• If you are eating the appropriate number of calories for your level of activity, your weight should not fluctuate greatly.
• The distribution of calories you take in should be as follows: 40 to 50 percent from carbohydrates, 30 percent from fat, and 20 to 30 percent from protein.
• Try to include carbohydrates, fat, and protein at each meal.

Click here to continue reading