Stress and Weight Gain

People who plan to lose weight generally have few question related to stress such as is stress related to weight, how stress is related to weight, etc. Well, there are numerous ways in which stress leads to gain in weight.

This happens due to stress hormone, cortisol. Our body is built in such a way that when we are under stress, the flight response gets triggered in our body, which leads to releasing out of several hormones.

When we are stressed, which may be due to any reason such as work pressure, mental pressure, lack of sleep, etc. our body reacts as if we are in danger and need to fight for our lives. To tackle stress, our body reacts in a different way and we may experience shift in blood flow and metabolism, burst of energy, and some other changes too.

If we remain in state of chronic stress, it may have severe affect in our health. Apart from host of other dangers; chronic stress also leads to weight gain.

Stress and cortisol leads to weight gain in the following ways:

Metabolism: Have you ever felt that you tend to put on weight when you are under stress, though you eat same amount of food as you always have? Cortisol can slow our metabolism rate, leading to weight gain. This can also make dieting bit difficult.

Craving: When we are stressed, carving for salty, sugary and fatty food increases. This includes processed food, sweets and foods that are not good for our body. These foods are less healthy and leads to weight gain.

Fat Storage: Stress even affects where we tend to store fat. Stress has direct link to abdominal fat. Prolonged stress can lead to greater abdominal fat.

Emotional Eating: Increases cortisol level not only lead to increase in craving for fatty and unhealthy foods, but  nervous energy can also cause us to eat more that we normally do. Emotional eating leads to gain in weight as we tend to more of eat unhealthy foods.

Fast Food: This is another reason that leads to gain in weight. Now days people are too busy and too stressed out to make a healthy dinner at home, and get tempted away by easily available fast food. Avoid eating fast food as this leads to weight gain.