If you find that you’re under a lot of stress and you’re gaining weight, you might think those things are connected and you just might be right. And that’s what we’re going to talk about in this video, along with seven things that you can do to relieve stress related weight gain. Let’s get started. So stress can make you gain weight and here’s how it works.
When your body’s under stress, your body starts to secrete different hormones. Adrenaline. Initially, initially that is the fight or flight. Mechanism that happens inside the body. Your heart rate goes up, your blood pressure goes up. Your body is prepared to defend itself from whatever frightening, stressful thing that is happening.
Unfortunately, today we’re not dealing with. We’re not dealing with dangerous kinds of stresses. And so, because of that, we’re, we’re dealing with more long-term stress. So then our body releases cortisol, which is like adrenaline, but it’s a lot milder. It actually is protective for ourselves. And so when we’re under stress cortisol, Can be helpful.
However, cortisol over a long period of time can be problematic, especially if we’re trying to lose weight because cortisol and insulin are practically best friends. Let’s talk about that. Insulin is secreted. To help process blood sugar. It helps to process the glucose that’s in our system helps to lower your blood sugar, but it also does other things.
When insulin is secreted, your body also stores fat. So we burn the sugar and we store fat. So if we’re constantly elevating our insulin response, which cortisol, especially uncontrolled cortisol secretion will do that. Then you’re going to have a consistent. Increase in fat storage, which is why when people are under significant amounts of stress, we see elevated visceral fat or fat around the belly.
It’s a very specific place that when you’re under stress, that we start to store more fat. So let’s talk about some things that can, you can. To help you. If stress is causing you to gain weight, number one is eating lower glycaemic foods. The foods can fall under a glycaemic index, which ones elevate your blood sugar more or less.
We need things on the low end of that glycaemic index. We need foods like fish, meat, cheese, eggs, green leafy vegetables, coffee, broccoli, garlic. Those kinds of things are low glycemic foods. Those will stop you from having those high insulin spikes and creating that insulin response that then starts to cause you to store fat.
The next thing you’re going to want to think about is the fat sweet combo. If you eat foods that are high in fat, But also are high in simple carbohydrates, high in fat. And high-end sweet. That is going to create a significant problem for you because your body is going to have to figure out which one is it going to burn and which one is it going to store?
And one of the things that we know is it’s very easy for your body to burn glucose, especially if you’re under stress, cortisol is increased. Insulin is increased your blood, your, your sugar, the glucose in your body is what’s getting digested. So the fat is going to get stored. So if you combine foods with fat and foods with sweet, you’re going to do.
Start noticing that your body is going to store more fat. And that’s the last thing we want. We need to teach the body to burn more fat. So one of the things that we want to make sure we’re doing is eating plenty of healthy fats. Omega-3 fatty acids found in fish, especially it’s found in some plant sources.
But, but the best concentration is in fish. Omega-3 fatty acids are anti-inflammatory, which is really important when we’re under stress, it helps to lower our body’s stress response, but omega-3 fatty acids also are good for the heart. They’re good for the brain and they teach your body over time to burn fat instead of.
Oh, Hey, if you like this kind of content, click the subscribe button, ring that bell so that you get notified of the next video. That’s going to drop probably next week and we’re going to work to make this the best natural health care committee. Together coffee and alcohol can be irritants to stress. Now coffee was on the list of lower glycaemic foods.
So in very moderate amounts, mild, moderate amounts, it can be helpful. Alcohol is very high in the glycemic index, so we pretty much want to avoid that if, if this is our goal, but with. High amounts of caffeine. If we’re under stress can actually elevate our levels of anxiety. So if you want that anxiety to go even higher, then go ahead and keep up that, that high amount of coffee intake.
We want to keep the caffeine levels actually low so that we don’t have that increase in anxiety. That simply comes from excessive caffeine. Number five exercise, aerobic and interval exercise can have a great effect on your weight and on your body’s ability to deal with stress. The first thing we’ll talk about is just simply a basic premise of weight loss and this isn’t all encompassing, but it’s one thing that we do have to realize you, the amount of calories that we eat, plus the amount of calories that we burn have to be.
If we’re going to stay at the same weight, the amount of calories we eat has to be lower than the amount of calories that we burn, if we’re going to lose weight. So when we’re exercising, we increase the amount of calories we burn. And so that. Equation is right. And so over time we’re going to lose weight.
Exercise can help us with that. The other things that exercise can do though, is your, your brain has all of the. Your brain has all of the psychotropic medication that it needs. It’s sitting right inside your brain. The best, anti-anxiety the best antidepressants. They’re literally living inside your brain, but we have to release them.
And exercise is the best way to release those chemicals. So making sure that we get enough exercise. Key also high-intensity interval exercises have been shown to one increase your aerobic capacity, but also will increase fat loss, especially when you compare that to aerobic exercise all by itself.
Number six, we’re going to talk about reducing your stress because if stress over long periods of time increased cortisol, which increases. Insulin, which then increases fat deposition. Then we need to come up with ways to decrease the amount of stress that we’re under. So let’s talk about a couple of ways to do that.
Number one, let’s just think about in your life. What are the things that create stress for you? Make a list? What are, what is it? Is it financial? Is it kids? Is it family? Is it specific situations? Certain relationships. Find the things that are creating stress for you. And there might be something you can do about some of them, let’s say, if there’s there’s someone around that creates a significant amount of stress.
Now there’s certain family you can’t get away from. And, and that sort of thing, but, but sometimes you can just shift some of those relationships. Maybe it’s a neighbor that you’re spending too much time with and they bring you down. You got. You can step away. You can change that relationship so that they’re not creating more and more stress for you.
Now. Some things you can’t control, but there are things that you can so think about the things that cause you stress and eliminate some of the things that you have control over. And can eliminate next, check your attitude. And remember this mathematical equation. It is happiness equals reality over expectation.
So if your reality is. Completely different than your expectation. Let’s say we have these really high expectations of how everyone’s going to be and how, how my life is going to be and how things are going to turn out if your expectations are way up here. But reality is somewhere over here, just not at our expectations.
We’re going to be automatically less happy. We’re going to be almost automatically more stressed. So what do we do about that? We either start changing our reality so that it’s better, or we change our expectation so that things are more in line. And when we do that, we will be less stressed and more happy.
And the last thing we’re going to talk about to reduce stress is real simple, because. Probably already have something today that you’re doing right now, or that you know of that helps you with stress. What does that thing for you? Because if it’s me, the things that helped me to reduce stress or going out for a run, going out for a bike ride, exercise, those kinds of things that really helps me to reduce stress.
But for you, it’s probably something that. But I bet you know what it is. So if there is something that helps you to reduce stress, I want you to start thinking about number one. What is the thing? And number two, how often am I doing it? If there’s an activity that you know, that helps you, let’s start doing it and let’s start doing it as much as you can, it will make a difference in your life.
It will make a difference in your health. It will make a difference in your. So there you have it. We’ve got seven ways to reduce stress and help you to lose weight. Go ahead and get started with those. And if you have any thoughts, anything that you’re doing that help you reduce stress or things that you’re doing to help you to lose weight, just put that down in the comments.
I would love to be able to see it. We’d love to share that with our community and I hope you have a great day and we’ll see in the next video.
