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Can stress make you fat?
Metabolism:
When under stress, do you feel like you’re prone to putting on more weight, even if you’re eating the same amount of food? Too much cortisol can slow the metabolism, causing more weight gain than it is normally experienced. This also makes dieting more difficult.
Cravings:
When you’re stressed, do you crave a nice salad, or do you reach for the Mc Donald’s? People experiencing chronic stress tend to crave more fatty, salty and sugary foods. This includes sweets processed food and other things that aren’t as good for you. These foods are typically less healthy and lead to increased weight gain.
Blood Sugar:
Prolonged stress can alter your blood sugar levels, causing mood swings, fatigue and conditions like hyperglycemia. Too much stress has even been linked to metabolic syndrome, a cluster of features that can lead to greater health problems like heart attacks and diabetes.
Fat Storage:
Too much stress even affects where we tend to store fat! Greater levels of abdominal fat are linked with higher levels of stress. Unfortunately, abdominal fat is not only aesthetically undesirable; it’s linked with greater health risks than fat stored in other areas of the body.
Stress and weight gain are also connected in other ways:
Emotional Eating
Not only can increased levels of cortisol make you crave unhealthy food, excess nervous energy often causes people to eat more than they normally would. How many times have you found yourself scouring the kitchen for a snack or absently munching on junk food when you’re not really hungry but just overly stressed?
Fast Food
Experts believe that one of the big reasons we’re seeing more obesity in our society these days is that people are too stressed and busy to make healthy dinner at home and are more often opting to get fast food at the nearest drive thru. Do you ever find yourself paying more than you’re like to for food that’s more convenient than healthy?
Too Busy to Exercise
With all the demands on your schedule, exercise may be one of the last things on you’re to do list. If so, you’re not alone. Unfortunately from sitting in traffic to sitting at our desks to sitting in front of the T.V in exhaustion at the end of the day, exercise often goes by the wayside.
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