Have you ever noticed that when you are feeling at your most stressed in life, you tend to also put on a few extra pounds just to compound the misery? There are lots of ways stress causes weight gain.
If the answer to that question is yes, then don’t worry, you are in the same boat as everybody else! The link between stress and weight gain is something that has been recognised and prevalent for as long as we can remember. If you were wondering exactly why the weight tends to arrive when you are your lowest point, then read through these seven ways stress causes weight gain.
One of the ways stress causes weight gain is to mess with your hunger hormones. You might not notice it, but the more stressed you are, the more compelled you are to eat to bring some yourself some comfort. Eating delicious junk food releases a hormone in our bodies that makes us feel better for a brief amount of time, so it only makes sense that when you are stressed you want to experience this at the risk of extra calories!
When you are depressed, you don’t tend to have as much energy as usual, and the less energy you have, the slower your metabolism will be and the slower your body will be able to break down fat. Protein is also created in your body to fight stress, which also combats the normal way that fat is used up in your body.
The more stressed you are, the more your mind will be working on overdrive, and this brain activity can lead to you feeling just as exhausted as if you had been working out for an hour. Because you are already so tired, you don’t feel like exercising and a bad cycle of inactivity can begin.
When you are stressed, you don’t tend to be hungry in the normal ways, which means that a regular diet plan goes out of the window. You instead find yourself opting for fast, easy meals that might not be as nutritionally balanced as usual.
Stress leads to people being awake all night, and something that people who can’t sleep tend to do is head to the fridge for a naughty midnight snack! These snacks are often be filled with more calories than you might expect.
When you are stressed, there are higher levels of cortisol in your body, and cortisol leads to added pounds turning up and camping themselves out across your abdomen to give you a classic extra tyre!
Like I said, being stressed leads to an irregular eating schedule, including skipping the odd meal or two and then eating more when you do have a meal. An irregular eating schedule leads to a slowing down of your metabolism because it isn’t being given a steady stream of work to do. The slower your metabolism is, the slower you will digest food and the more chance you will have of putting on extra weight.