Stress, stress, stress. Everyone is talking today about stress. Many of us pass through stressful periods that not only affect our mind but also our bodies in several ways. The way society is today, the way we work, the way we live, can influence the amount of stress we encounter each day. Stress is something that anybody wants to avoid, because it’s not something to like – it makes us feel bad, agitated, nervous. Because people are different, each individual handles stress differently, some people are not very impacted by it and deal with it quite well, but other people can have a very hard time with it on their heads. Each person has their own stress-o-meter, with their specific maximum tolerance and how much time they can endure it. Stress is basically caused by a hormone released by your body called cortisol. During difficult times, your body will produce more of this hormone, and this causes you to feel stressed.
Why is everybody talking about stress?
Stress comes in different situations, places and periods. The effects of stress are numerous(a good example here is anxiety), so you should try to control it as much as possible. It can get you at work when you are working on that complicated project and running out of time, flying on a plane, it can come when you are driving in a very busy area, it can come before or through exams, during very important decisions, going through changes in different aspects of your life, and so on. It’s good to know that each person reacts differently to stress, meaning that it can affect your mood and behavior, your ability to concentrate on tasks or many tasks at once(multitasking), can give you a difficult time sleeping and even headaches.
Researchers have found that stress is mainly of two types: psychological(mental) stress and physical stress. Mental stress usually refers to things that affect the way you think, concentrate, react to things, which are mainly resulted from high-tension situations at work, working or performing tasks under pressure for a long time, exams, losing something important or someone close to you. On to the other hand, physical stress, is stress mainly caused by the way you treat your body or what happens to it from external factors. Things like an improper diet, improper or not enough sleep, suffering an accident or having a disease that influences your body’s health, can also cause stress. It’s good to keep in mind that physical stress can result in many kinds of issues to your health, such as sudden weight gain, heart disease or having a too high blood pressure. As your body react in different ways to stress on the spot, you might experience some stress symptoms like tense muscles, higher heart and breathing pace, not being able to fall asleep, issues with your immune and digestive systems.
Be careful with your cravings
Scientists say that because of stress you can gain weight. How can something that it’s not even edible cause you to gain weight? The way your digestive system and your metabolism is a curious one, because it slows them down. Having a lower metabolism means that your body will not be able to process calories as fast as it uses to do, resulting in many calories that were not burned, and these unfortunately will be stored as fat throughout your body. To put it in simple words, if you eat an exact amount and type of food in a day and have an exact physical activity, and through that day you are relaxed and have nothing to worry about, and do exactly the same in another day when you are very stressed, chances are high that your body will not process the calories the same, and many leftovers will be deposited in your body as fat, during the day that you were stressed. But the story of weight gain resulted from stress does not stop just here. Stress also makes you want to eat more. How? Remember that early we talked about that stress hormone called cortisol? Well it turns out that when cortisol is released in the body, it also affects your insulin levels, causing them to be higher, which will lower your blood sugar level and automatically gives you the desire of fatty and sugary foods, like chocolate or ice cream, and even worse – fast foods. In other words, it makes you hungry, it makes you want to eat very often, but worse, overeating. This is a problem because stress can cause compulsive eating disorder, meaning that each time you go through a stressful or emotional situation, you will want to eat, a lot, and all the time. It gets even worse because having an eating disorder like this, will make you gain weight very rapidly, which can lead to chronic diseases like type two diabetes. If you think you suffer of a compulsive eating disorder, we highly recommend you that you consult a certified specialist.
By now, I think it’s very clear that there is indeed a very strong connection between stress and weight gain. Of course, stress is unavoidable in many situations, but it’s up to us how we deal with it, and how we let it affect our minds and bodies. Conclusion: more stress can mean more food and lazy metabolism, and more food and a lazy metabolism means more fat. If you think stress gets too much of you and overwhelms you, there are many things you can do them yourself to counterattack, such as being more active, doing yoga, listening to calm music, being more social; but also it’s highly recommended that you see a therapist that can help you overcome stress.
