In a project called the Study of Women's Health Across the Nation, it was discovered that stress and stressful events directly affect weight gain. Leading this project, Tene T. Lewis, PhD, a health psychologist at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, she and her colleagues asked more than 2,000 women in their 40's and 50's about the negative or stressfull life events experienced in the past year. Included were things like money worries, divorce, death of a loved one. Researchers discovered that the more stressors a woman reported, the more weight she had gained over four years, even after taking in variables that influence weight such as diet, exercise, smoking and age.

So how and why would strain and anxiety trigger some of us to pile on extra weight? Stress activates the flight or fight response, a physiological reaction designed to get your body moving quickly in a physical emergency. When your brain perceives a threat, it sounds the alarm to your adrenal glands (located on your kidneys) to pump out the stress hormone cortisol. The hormone then signals fat cells to quickly release energy, which your muscles can use for a surge of power to 'flee' or 'fight.' When the danger passes, cortisol briefly stays elevated to encourage your body to replenish its fat stores, then returns to normal. But, if the stress response continues for months on end as you worry about this and worry about that, then cortisol levels remain persistently elevated, persistently signaling your body to store more fat!

The mechanism may also affect where flab builds up on your body. Under stress, women who carry more fat in their abdominal area secreted signficanly more cortisol than women who didn't have extra belly fat which becomes a serious health risk for heart disease and stroke.

The stress-fat connection plays out in our bodies in three other subtle ways:

1. Stress stimulates your appetite. A persistently high-level release of cortisol relentlessly sends the message that you need to refuel your energy stores and also spurs a spike in insulin, the hormone that controls sugar levels. Insulin playsa key role in feelings of hunger and satiety.

2. It awakens high-calorie cravings. "We all know that you don't yearn for celery sticks when under pressure", says Elisse S. Epel, PhD, assistant professor of psychiatry at Univeristy of California San Francisco. Her research shows that women tend to reach for comfort foods--high-fat, sweet treats like ice cream, candy, or cake--when anxious because these rich foods stimulate the release of opioids, brain chemicals that produce pleasurable feelings that help ease anxiety, at least temporarily.

3. It disrupts your sleep. Stress and the associated worrying that keeps you up at night can trigger hormonal changes that encourage weight gain. When researchers tested 1,024 volunteers involved in the long-term Wisconsin Sleep Cohort Study, they found that compared with men and women who routinely slept eight hours nightly, those who logged only five hours had a 15 percent higher level of ghrelin, a hormone that stimulates hunger and a 16 percent lower level of leptin, a hormone that signals fullness. Destressing tactics that have been found to be helpful for mitigating stress are: visualization techniques, deep breathing, meditation, and reminding yourself that you have choices. This is what we call "reframing" in the field of Hypnotherapy.

This article appeared on MSN Lifestyle-Mind, Body, & Soul, October 2, 2005. The author is Janis Graham and was originally published in Ladies Home Journal, July, '05.

Contact John Tamiazzo by emailing him at jtamiazzo@msn.com
Last modified: 10/8/05