We all know the obvious things we can do to shed unwanted pounds and improve our health. Things like nutrition, exercise, and hydration. However, there is one major component many of us are missing, and it is also the thing making losing weight harder. Today, I am discussing what this one thing is and what you can do to boost your weight loss efforts.
It comes in many forms, thoughts, pressure at work, relationships, finances, and the list goes on. There are also other forms of stress or ways we add to existing stress most of us don’t think about. This includes insufficient sleep, overusing artificial energy sources like caffeine, overly busy lifestyles, and lack of rest or down time. There are many ways stress can not only hinder weight loss, but also result in weight gain. Today I am discussing these and what you can do to manage your stress and mitigate these effects.
- Hormonal changes.
- Unhealthy behaviors.
- Disrupted sleep.
Let me paint a little picture for you of what my day-to-day was like for years. I was working between 50-70 hours a week in a high-stress job. I was single and divorced and my sister and nephew were living with my three children and I. I was living paycheck to paycheck, so finances were a source of stress. My sister and I would stay up late trying to unwind with wine after the kids were in bed, which meant we were going to bed between 11 PM and midnight. Sometimes later.
I had an hour-long commute, so I had to get up by 5:30 AM at the latest, which means I was getting up to 6 hours of sleep a night at best. However, I worked out in the morning most days, so that meant I was usually getting up between 4:30 and 5:00 AM. So, I was getting about 4 ½ to 5 hours of sleep most of the time. On average, I was getting home from work between 6 PM and 7:30 PM. Then I would make dinner as soon as I got home. Dinner was followed by clean up and lunch prep for the next day. After that was the kids’ homework, before getting them ready for bed and putting them in bed. Then my sister and I would repeat our evening routine and do it all again the next day. By the time the weekends came around, we spent them playing catch up on all the things around the house we didn’t have much time for during the work week, like cleaning, laundry, grocery shopping, and any errands that needed to be done.
We also made time to do fun things with the kids on the weekends, but we were both exhausted most of the time. It didn’t seem like there was much that could be done. This was just life. Just suck it up. Just drink more coffee. Just get an energy drink when you’re more tired than normal.
What I couldn’t see was that my body was adapting to this, but not in a good way. My body was in survival mode, because I was running on adrenaline on a daily basis. I wasn’t giving my body any other choice, so my body did what was necessary to keep me going. However, this was also countering my efforts to lose weight and was actually causing me to plateau or even gain weight despite all my efforts. So, let’s get into what was going on.
As I mentioned earlier, there are several things that stress does that are linked to weight gain.
- Hormonal changes.
I mentioned that the reason I was able to keep going each day, despite being exhausted all the time was because I was running on adrenaline. This is one of the two primary hormones your body releases when you are stressed. Cortisol is the second of the two.
Your body only knows it is experiencing stress; it does not differentiate work stress or lifestyle stress from the stress of being physically threatened or attacked. The adrenal system, which produces adrenaline and cortisol, primarily serves to keep us alive when facing an imminent threat. This is the same part of us that governs fight or flight; so short-term production to either fight off a threat or get away from it quickly.
Chronic stress keeps this system producing these hormones on a constant basis. In addition to the adrenal system, chronic stress can also affect the various hormones involved with our metabolism and appetite. This results in things like increased fat storage, resistance to fat loss, increased appetite, and cravings for high calorie foods. It can also result in things like anxiety, depression, and fatigue. - Unhealthy behaviors.
As I mentioned, hormones like cortisol and adrenaline can affect our appetite, making us want to eat more. However, chronic stress can also lead us to many different behaviors that counter our weight loss efforts, such as emotional eating or drinking as ways to avoid negative emotions or to attempt to self-medicate.
I’ve discussed my struggle with anxiety and depression in other episodes and on my blog. There were multiple things that contributed to these, and a constant state of stress was certainly one of them. I tried to cope with it with alcohol. I thought it was helping me calm down and sleep. In reality it was worsening my anxiety and depression and the sleep I was getting wasn’t quality sleep due to the way alcohol affects our sleep.
Not only does alcohol affect sleep, but it also affects weight loss, and not in a beneficial way. Other ways we try to cope with the negative feelings of stress includes emotional eating, binge eating, or other substances or means of distracting us from how we feel. Not only can these things be unhealthy, but emotional and binge eating obviously lead to weight gain, which undermines any other things we might be doing to lose weight. - Disrupted sleep.
Chronic stress interferes with our sleep. It can make it difficult for us to fall asleep and/or stay asleep. If we try to cope with stress with alcohol or other drugs, or look to these things to address insomnia or difficulty falling and staying asleep, we get poor sleep. Poor sleep results in weight gain as it disrupts various hormones related to hunger and appetite.
So, these are a few of the many ways chronic stress can hinder weight loss. If you have been stuck in your weight loss or have found yourself gaining weight, managing your stress better may be the missing component to getting results. Some of the things you can integrate into your daily routine to manage your stress include:
- Meditation.
- Regular exercise.
- Good nutrition (more fresh, healthy foods; less processed and junk foods).
- Establish and maintain a sleep schedule of at least 7 hours of sleep.
- Avoid alcohol.
The unspoken step here is that you have to prioritize your health and wellbeing first, and that means setting boundaries to be able to do that. It is all a process of change, which can often be overwhelming. Perhaps you are just beginning or haven’t quite been able to get started with exercise and better nutrition.
This was the doorway to my own health and healing, which is why I am so passionate about helping others get started. I am offering a FREE 30-day training program right now so you can kickstart your own health and weight loss journey. I am kicking this off with weekly group coaching calls inside my FREE Facebook Group on December 4, 2023. You do NOT want to miss out on this insane offer! This 30-day program is worth over $1,000. You will get access to my new trainer app, intuitive eating plan, and 30 days of trainings and coaching inside my free Facebook group.
Click the link to the FREE 30-day training program, fill out the application, and get yourself set up today, because this is only available for a limited time. Get a jump start on your weight loss or fitness goals and join me in this FREE 30-day training program. I look forward to seeing you in there!