How can stress de-rail your weight loss plans?
Stress is in inherent part of our day to day lives - and for many of us, a certain level of stress can be a positive and add impetus to our days.
But we’re often struggling with more stress than we realise. This can be big stress drivers for example money worries, arguments with your partner or family members, health issues, job pressure - all stuff which can seriously impact you with a tightening of your gut, an inability sleep and a constant worry in your mind. We are also beset with a never ending list of smaller stresses - a child’s lost uniform (hers’s hoping for September!), or homework; the never-ending need to produce yet another meal to feed those hungry bellies; the questions for help just as you’re trying to write an email; the to do list which just seems to grow.. the list goes on. Add to all hidden sources of stress in our bodies with inflammation from our diet, environment or health - and you’re a high stress environment.
And so living in stress is a daily constant. Which doesn’t go un-noticed by your body but results in increased levels of our stress hormones - particularly cortisol.
Now you might as what this has to do with weight loss.. well quite a lot as it happens.
Thinking back to our cave-man existence - stress then was typically a short-lived urgent issue - needing immediate action e.g.run and hide - think ‘fight of flight’. And so it’s not really surprising that our stress hormone, cortisol, is associated with an increase in our blood sugar (energy needed to run or fight) - which in turn results in an increase in insulin - the ‘storage hormone’.
But if you’re trying to lose weight, one of the most important aspects is to manage blood sugar - and insulin.
Add onto that that when stress levels are high our bodies don’t ‘want’ to lose weight - who know’s whats round the corner and it might need all the energy resources it has!
All this to say that when you’re looking at mid-life weight gain, don’t ignore stress.
What can you do about your stress levels?
My three top tips to help you manage your stress levels are:
Build some stress-lowering practices into your day – e.g. taking 15 minutes in the morning to do some yoga, journal or meditate
Practice mindfulness during the course of the day
Use breathwork to manage particularly stressful situations or menopause symptoms
If you’d like more information on how to put these into practice, or if you think Stress might be derailing you then do give me a call or get in touch.
Photo credit: Photo by Holger Link on Unsplash
