The trifecta, stressed, sick, and gaining weight! Who wants that? Well, unfortunately, our bodies don’t discriminate when it comes to stress and how we respond to any stressor – which is to activate your stress response system. Let’s have a quick look at what stress is, as it’s important you understand how stress causes weight gain.
Most people think of stress as something bad that happens to you, that causes you to feel anxious, like going for a job interview, being late for an appointment, or having a fight with your partner. Yes, those things can cause you to experience stress, but it’s the not-so-obvious things like lack of sleep, illness, or being too hot or cold that can cause stress as well.
Put simply, stress is anything that moves your body out of balance. Your body is always trying to maintain a balance (homeostasis) for everything, like blood pressure, pulse, and temperature. Your body is a magnificent machine, and your stress response system is built to respond to any source of stress and then, ideally, bring it back into balance or homeostasis.
If we define stress as anything that moves your body out of balance, let’s look at some examples:
- intense exercise
- being too hot or cold
- illness of any kind
- lack of food and water
- lack of sleep
- exposure to chemicals
- trauma (from injury, infection, or surgery)
- environmental pollution (from pesticides, herbicides, toxins, and heavy metals)
- inadequate light
- excessive noise
- exposure to electromagnetic fields
- inadequate oxygen supply
- low blood sugar levels
- nutritional deficiencies
- food allergies
- emotional stress
- isolation
- relationship stress
- information overload
- worry
- shame
- jealousy
- self-criticism
- perfectionism
- marriage and relationship problems
- lack of support
- loss of income
- grief
There are literally millions of stressors that can move your body out of balance—you can’t avoid them all the time. According to Robert Sapolsky, author of Why Zebras don’t Get Ulcers, just thinking about something stressful can activate your stress response, which is why worry is so draining.
When you experience stress from any source, your stress system is activated to increase your blood sugars, oxygen, and blood pressure—whilst at the same time decreasing things that are not important for your immediate survival, like normal cell function, digestion, and immune function. Just imagine every time you are feeling stressed:
- That you don’t digest your food properly—which leads to poor nutrient absorption and vitamin/mineral deficiencies leading to disease states.
- That your trillions of cells don’t function properly leaving you feeling tired.
- That your immune system stops protecting you—which leaves you vulnerable to disease.
Our stress system was designed to deal with short periods of stress, like escaping from a wild tiger, where you need a lot of energy to escape quickly (that’s why your blood sugar, oxygen, and blood pressure increase—to give you energy to escape), and then you actually use up that extra energy by running away or escaping from the stressor or tiger. Once you have used up the extra energy and escaped from the tiger, your body is supposed to return to a normal balanced state, or homeostasis.
However, many of the stressors we face today, like being late, a job interview, or argument with our partner, rarely allow us to run away or escape, and therefore use up all that additional blood sugar. According to Dr. James Wilson, this leaves your body in a sustained stress mode, or in other words, it leaves you in a state where your stress response is constantly switched on. This is a huge problem for society today and can lead to serious disease, like insulin resistance, obesity, diabetes, auto-immune disease, cardiovascular disease, and more.
Why? As Dr. Wilson states, your blood sugar, insulin, and blood pressure stay elevated during periods of chronic stress and your digestion, cellular growth and repair, and immune function are suppressed, leaving you vulnerable to disease. Most of us today are reacting to everyday events, like being stuck in traffic, as if they are life threatening and activating our stress response all through the day, as our brains are not good at distinguishing between a threat that could harm us and one that just makes us feel anxious.
High Levels of Cortisol Can Cause Weight Gain
Cortisol
It’s important you understand the role of the adrenal hormone cortisol, as your body must produce increased levels of this hormone when you are chronically (for a long time) stressed. Each time your stress response is activated your body has to produce higher amounts of cortisol to cope with the threat. If you are consistently producing higher levels of cortisol over time then, this has serious side effects including:
- weakening your immune system
- blood sugar imbalances
- weight gain
- insomnia (high levels at night prevent sleep)
- osteoporosis
- aging you prematurely
- impairing brain and memory function
- disrupting synapse regulation
- linked to serious conditions like cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and autoimmune disease
If you are experiencing chronic stress, your body needs to produce higher levels of cortisol, so you have more energy. These high levels of cortisol increase your blood sugar to give you more energy; this is great if you are going in a marathon or plan to do a 10 km run! Unfortunately, most of us do not run or exercise when we feel stressed, so we don’t use up that energy. Therefore, the increased blood sugar levels—unless depleted—can lead to obesity and increased risk of type 2 diabetes. This is why so many people put on weight and end up with what is fondly called a stress belly.
What is the solution?
There are many solutions and your approach needs to be a holistic one, where you aim to improve your lifestyle and have medical checks to rule out an underactive thyroid or other medical problems that may contribute to your weight gain. Sleep is incredibly important and lack of it increases cortisol and other stress hormones and this is directly linked to weight gain. I recommend you read my book from “Broken To Beautiful” to get the entire picture and follow the easy to follow strategies. The following diet information is for people experiencing stress, gaining weight, and not enjoying optimal health.
There are 3 main diet principles to follow to ensure you stay calm, reduce stress hormones, and reach your ideal weight are:
- Eat a low-carbohydrate diet and when you eat carbohydrates, ensure they are low Glycemic Index (GI), so they don’t spike your blood sugars. This produces less stress hormones and promotes calm and weight loss. If your diet contains a lot of high GI foods, they will increase your blood sugar quickly and to a high level, which then requires your body to produce higher amounts of insulin. Consistently producing higher amounts of insulin when your blood sugars are high is not good, as insulin is known as a fat storage hormone, so you are more likely to be storing fat.
- Choose foods that are anti-inflammatory, as they produce fewer stress hormones. According to Dr. Jockers, no one thing causes inflammation; however, an inflammatory diet, blood sugar imbalances, leaky gut, sleep loss, chronic stress, and exposure to environmental toxins/chronic infections are all factors which can lead to chronic inflammation.
- Ensure you eat every two to three hours to keep your blood sugar stable. This ensures you are not calling on your body to produce the adrenal hormone cortisol all the time, which means you will feel more calm. You need to eat fairly regularly and every two to three hours is best. When your blood sugar drops because you are hungry or have not eaten, your body has to produce more cortisol because cortisol is the hormone responsible for converting your body’s stored proteins, fats, and carbohydrates into blood sugar. Cortisol is incredibly important for maintaining your blood sugar in an optimal range. If your cortisol levels are declining because of chronic stress, (cortisol levels can either decline or increase during periods of chronic stress) you don’t want them declining even further, because of low blood sugars, caused by not eating frequently enough. If you are not chronically stressed, then going for longer periods without food and intermittent fasting is Ok, however, not when you are experiencing chronic stress.
References
Wilson, J. Dr. (2021). What is Stress?
https://adrenalfatigue.org/stress-and-your-health/got-stress/what-is-stress
Sapolsky, R. M. (2004). Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers: The Acclaimed Guide to Stress, Stress-Related Diseases, and coping. (3rd Ed.)
Wilson, J. Dr. (2021). The Problem with Chronic Stress.
http://adrenalfatigue.org/stress-and-your-health/got-stress/problem-chronic-stress
Wilson, J. Dr. (2021). Stress and the Cortisol Tightrope. https://adrenalfatigue.org/stress-and-the-cortisol-tightrope
Jockers, D. Dr. (2021). What causes inflammation? 7 key contributors. https://drjockers.com/causes-inflammation/
