Is Stress Causing Your Weight Gain?

Dr Mishkat Shehata explains how managing your stress can be as important as calorie counting for your slimming goals.

From an evolutionary point of view, stress is a biological response to threats. The system responsible for activating stress is called the sympathetic nervous system or ‘fight or flight’.

Hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol kick into action because our brain has detected a threat, prompting our body to react by increasing our breathing and heart rate and shifting the blood supply from organs such as the liver and kidneys.

‘Rest and digest’ is the system that keeps our vital organs functioning and is known as the parasympathetic nervous system.

There are two types of stress: good and bad. ‘Good’ stress is the type we need. It’s the type that responds to a threat appropriately allowing us to react by dealing with it or removing ourselves from the hazardous situation.

‘Bad’ stress is also known as chronic stress and this is a disease. It occurs when our bodies and brain are in a prolonged state of stress. This has far-reaching negative effects on our physical and mental health, risk of disease and longevity.

 

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What Are the Signs?

Stress can manifest itself in many ways and can affect us emotionally, physically, mentally as well as influence our behavior and relationships.

You can experience cognitive symptoms such as anxiety and racing thoughts.

Emotional symptoms include irritability, loneliness and feeling powerless.

Physical symptoms of stress include hyperventilating, sexual problems, chest pains and feeling dizzy.

It can impact on your relationships with others as you may experience resentment or an urge to lash out.

Stress can make us pick up bad habits we left in the past or do more of some such as excessive alcohol drinking, smoking, and compulsive eating.

The box below encompasses some signs, in addition to those mentioned above, that may mean you could be suffering from chronic stress.

How Does Stress Affect Your Weight?

If you are trying to lose weight and it isn’t shifting, then stress may be an underlying cause preventing you from reaching your goal weight.

Stress directly affects weight by slowing metabolism, affecting food choices and making us reach for comfort foods.

It indirectly affects weight by preventing us from having restorative sleep, which also affects our food choices.

Animal studies have shown that stress can make the gut more permeable, which activates the immune and inflammatory response resulting in additional stress hormone production.

 

Stress-busting Strategies

Stress can be combatted using simple yet effective strategies to help promote a sense of relaxation and calm throughout your body and mind.

An easy way to fight stress is to undertake diaphragmatic breathing.

Deep, controlled and slow breathing using the muscle that sits below your lungs, called the diaphragm, tells your ‘rest and digest’ system to work fully and your ‘fight and flight’ system to take a backseat.

This relaxation response is elicited by activation of a nerve in your body called the vagus nerve.

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) are effective tools to combat stress.

CBT helps you understand your thought patterns, identify triggers and learn how to create positive actions and thoughts.

MBSR, originally developed by Jon Kabat-Zinn in the 1970s, combines mindfulness, meditation and yoga with a specific focus on reducing stress.

It is an evidence-based stress management tool that involves an eight-week course.

A whole food, predominantly plant-based way of eating can help you manage stress and is great for weight loss and maintenance.

Your gut bugs, known as the gut microbiome, strive on foods packed with fiber called prebiotics, which they feed on to produce chemicals called short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) such as butyrate.

SCFAs stimulate serotonin production in the gut, which is a hormone involved in sleep, appetite and happiness, hereby improving our overall wellbeing and stress levels.

Probiotics, or live good bacteria, have been shown to also improve the gut microbiome.

The 1714-Serenitas bacterial culture has been associated with a higher ability to cope with stress during a stress test. This probiotic can be found in PrecisionBiotics’ Zenflore product.

 

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Exercise is a great way to manage stress, improve your metabolism and lose weight. Aerobic exercise releases endorphins, which are our body’s happy hormones that give us the ‘runner’s high’ feeling.

Undertaking 150 to 300 minutes of moderate aerobic activity per week is great for your health, stress and weight loss.

Restorative sleep is integral to keeping stress under control because poor sleep can make us irritable leading to more stress.

Not sleeping well or enough can affect our food choices making us reach for highly processed foods.

Ecotherapy involves spending time in nature as a coping strategy for stress.

Shinrin-yoku is a Japanese practice that literally translates to ‘forest bathing’. It invites us to fully immerse ourselves in the forest and woods.

Research has shown that spending two hours per week in nature can improve stress, depression and anxiety.

Keeping the Weight off?

Easy! You keep practicing the strategies that work for you. It is easy to fall out of habit and it can be pretty hard for some to create a habit.

Research estimates that it takes 66 days to form a habit and a minimum of 21 to create one. An easy and practical way of creating a habit is known as the ‘cue-craving-response-reward’ model.

This is based on the work of James Clear, author of The New York Times bestselling book Atomic Habits.

You need to start small by focusing on adding just one thing to your daily routine and latching it onto something you already do each day.

You should focus on the reward feeling you will get from the action you are taking and the motivation to do it or ‘craving’.

 

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For example, do you have a spare five minutes in the morning while your coffee brews? Perfect!

Why not set a timer for five minutes and practice meditation – there are plenty of apps to guide you – as a great way to set your intention for the day ahead?

You will be preparing your mind to deal with whatever the day throws at you.

References:

Stress and the gut microbiome
https://insight.microba.com/stress-and-the-gut-microbiome/
Treatment for stress
https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/types-of-mental-health-problems/stress/treatment-for-stress/
How are habits formed: Modelling habit formation in the real world
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/ejsp.674