Have you ever wondered why so many people have trouble losing weight despite dieting, weight loss programs, exercise, medications and supplements designed to help you lose weight? It’s amazing how this problem somehow evades solution. And there can be many reasons for weight gain but they usually have certain things in common.
Overeating is pointed to as an obvious cause, but it’s not the whole truth, because it doesn’t explain why people overeat, or why it becomes so hard to get and keep the weight off. One not so obvious cause is stress – a condition which creates hormone imbalance. Stress effects not only your emotions and mind, but your body as well.
Is Stress always Bad?
All types of stress are not harmful. In cases of extreme environmental stress, such as running away from a tiger or even the thrill of taking a boat over white water rapids, as soon as the stressful situation is over the body goes back to normal.
Nowadays, most people live more sedentary lives. And although the environment may appear safer, modern lifestyles can be very hectic and stressful. Financial insecurity, terrorist attacks, substance abuse, work instability, declining spiritual values, and bad news on the media daily, can make for what is called chronic stress in the environment. This chronic stress can ruin your health and life.
The Physiology of Stress
When you are faced with a situation that demands immediate action, such as how to get your family out of a burning building fast, your body reacts by producing two hormones, Adrenaline and Cortisol. The adrenaline increases heart rate, raises blood pressure and gives your body a sudden burst of energy that allows you to do things ordinarily beyond your ability. This is sometimes referred to as “fight or flight” reaction and is a useful survival mechanism.
Meanwhile, Cortisol increases blood sugar, raises the brain’s ability to utilize glucose and releases substances to protect tissues from oxidative stress. This creates by-products that tend to make the body more acidic. At the same time it turns off functions that are not essential to immediate survival such as the immune, digestive and reproductive systems. Prolonged stress creates a state that impedes normal tissue repair.
Chronic Stress, Health Problems and Weight Gain
When you have been in a situation that seems unsolvable for a very long time such as a job you hate, a tragic loss you can’t stop thinking about, or an unhappy marriage – and you are losing hope. or have lost hope of ever getting out of it, you are under chronic stress. And your body will be creating cortisol non-stop.
Long term production of cortisol leads to continued glucose production and increased blood sugar levels. It also creates insulin resistance. The insulin resistance and high blood sugar result in energy-starved cells. Your body sends out hunger signals, but no matter how much you eat, your cells are not receiving the energy. So you have the urge to eat more and more and gain weight. Being overweight can result in diabetes, cancer, stroke, heart disease and other poor health conditions. Be alert to what is happening and when experience more stress.
Some common everyday causes of stress that can build up:
· Physical stress comes from overwork, exercising beyond your capability, getting inadequate sleep as well as illnesses or injuries.
· Toxic substances such as excess caffeine, alcohol, drugs and medicines, additives in processed foods, pesticides, herbicides and chemicals in cleaning or beauty products stress your body.
· Stress can be self- created by thinking you have to be perfect, driving yourself to work way beyond your comfort zone and constant worry.
· Bad emotions such as sadness, loneliness, fear and anxiety definitely create stress.
· When you are not reaching your goals and/or have lost sight of who you really are, you may find yourself abandoning your core spiritual values and beliefs. This is bound to cause stress.
· An improper diet such as the typical American diet (containing large quantities of processed foods, sugar and artificial sugar substitutes, refined white flour, highly processed oils and an excess of animal foods) creates an acidic body pH which stresses the body.
Don’t Fall into this Trap
Sometimes weight gain creeps up on you so gradually that you hardly notice. But after time, most people finally realize that they are overweight – or even obese. This can be a shocking experience to some, but at least it opens the door to now wanting to do something about it.
Once you face the fact that you need to lose weight there are several choices you can make. If you ignore it, and continue the same lifestyle and diet as before, chances are you will continue to maintain and gain weight and may then find yourself in a serious illness or non-optimum health condition.
We recommend you do something about it! You may decide that desperate conditions require desperate solutions and go all out on a weight loss diet, vigorous and strenuous exercises, weight loss medications or supplements and more. Some become so obsessed with weight loss that life becomes even more stressful. This is a trap. Don’t go there…
Actually, desperate situations require lighter remedies. By changing your lifestyle and diet a little bit at a time and not making it difficult, you can reduce stress and eventually lose weight.
How to get Started
A simple way to change lifestyle and diet involves developing better survival habits. A good definition of “habit” is a usual way of behaving, something that a person does often in a regular and repeated way. So how do you change a habit?
The way you change a habit is to pick out the specific one you want to change and decide how you will change it. For example, if you have been eating a lot of sugar or artificial sugar substitutes (as bad, if not worse than sugar), you might decide to switch to a little unheated raw honey or maple syrup as totally natural and safe sweetener. You would throw out or get rid of sugar and sugar substitutes and purchase enough the natural sweet foods, including a little fruit or coconut water for all your sweetening needs. As your body adjusts, you may find you are developing a taste for the natural flavors of foods without much need for sweetening.
It’s not necessarily easy, but it is simple. Instead of sugar in your coffee, you use a little maple syrup or maple sugar or coconut cream which is slightly sweet. You carry some in your purse or pocket. You no longer purchase sugar.
In fact, to help phase out the excess sweet taste we have been primed to desire, try eating more bitter herbs like lettuces and vegetables. When you eat a salad with slightly bitter greens and herbs first in your meal, your digestive juices (enzymes) are stimulated all through the digestive tract. This can restore the natural balance of sweet vs bitter receptors throughout the body , and sweets won’t even as sweet anymore, reducing your desire for the. Read more about bitter vs sweet receptors in the body and how to influence the balance.
You just do this over and over until it becomes a new habit. And when starting, it is helpful to choose the easiest habit first. The reason for this being that many people give up on weight loss because they aren’t getting results. They are having losses. It’s important to win. In the above example, when you finally stop eating sugar or artificial sweeteners, you have succeeded and that’s a win. Every win or success helps to make you stronger.
This could be the start and if you actually cut out sugar it would make a difference. Then you can pick out the next easiest change you feel you need to make that would not be hard to do..
Simple ways to Reduce Stress
Remember, if you do have chronic stress your body will produce Cortisol and that makes it hard to lose weight. Recently, there have been products that have been marketed as “Cortisol blockers”. These are not only ineffective, but can put further stress on your body. Drugs are not the answer. They make your body more acidic and stressed out. It’s easier and safer to take actions that lower stress. Here are some for starters.
1. Get exercise: If you’ve heard the phrase “no pain equals no gain”, don’t worry. It’s not true. When exercise is painful, it’s also stressful. There are many forms of exercise that almost anyone can do such as walking, bicycling, swimming, gardening, dancing, yoga and playing with children, cleaning or other daily activities that keep you moving. Exercise has a beneficial effect on weight loss but also creates endorphins (substances released in the brain naturally that can lessen pain and make you feel relaxed). It’s best to exercise at least 20 to 40 minutes daily. It need not all be done at one time. Start slow and build up as you feel the gains. You’ll feel better and find your attention more focused and clear.
2. Get adequate sleep: If possible, end off your work day at the same time each day, then wind down. After dinner is ideal, if you can do it. From the end- off time to your bedtime it should be as enjoyable and relaxing as possible. Take a walk, listen to music, read a good book, visit with friends, enjoy a hot shower or take a foot bath. (Epsom salts make a foot bath very relaxing). It can help to have a cut off time for screens – the TV , computer and phone, as well.
3. Connect with or work to create a support system: Having friends and family who truly care about you can make life a whole lot less stressful. Going it alone can be very tough. So seek out those persons with whom you feel most comfortable, that make you feel good and are trusted. Even if there are few of these people it’s best to find more friends that fit the above criteria than to hook up with negative persons. You can even add to your list any tradespeople you can depend on for honesty and competent work who you call on when needed. When you have a negative person to whom you are connected, you will have more stress. Do not continue a relationship with someone who brings you down. Always seek out the most positive people as your support network.
4. Decide to be a positive person: No matter how bad things are, it can only help for you to take a positive attitude. Try to see how you can use the problems as a way to come out better. Believe in yourself. If this does not seem possible, there are things you may have done or are still doing that have made you lose your self-respect. So decide to change. If you can face up to your own past actions, and decide to take more responsibility, it becomes possible, to change your life for the better. This, like all changes, can be done by deciding to do what it takes to make the change and doing it.
5. Improve your diet: If you are eating what most people are, you may actually be putting a lot of toxic substances into your body. They do not kill you right away, but over time they can result in diseases or conditions that you do not ever want to have. Make some major changes, one at a time. Switch from large amounts of highly processed foods in the normal American diet to 20 %, and from almost no fresh fruits and vegetables to about 80% of your foods being vegetables, fresh fruit, clean proteins and fats, and non-chemicalized foods.
Stop eating processed foods. These have very little if any food value and have ingredients you would be disgusted by anyway if you knew their details. Because they have so little nutrition, these foods make you crave something more and eat more. Some of the additives are even addictive, like MSG (which overexcites the nervous system), making you crave the very foods you should avoid.
Avoid all processed vegetable oils. They aren’t fit for cellular health. The way to a longer life in better health includes improving the ratio of omega 3 to omega 6 oils toward what it was in ‘the old days’, before food processing. Real extra virgin olive oil, extra virgin coconut oil and fresh flax seed are healthful, also some fish oils and butter, but check the quality. Ruthlessly cut out man-made oils that have been manipulated, heavily processed with chemicals and high heat which is very destructive to health. That includes canola oil, “vegetable oil”, cotton seed oil and corn oil.
Then switch over from simple carbohydrate-based energy sources loaded with transfats that are so common in our grab-and-go lifestyle. include more healthy fat-based sources that help your absorb the essential fat-soluble vitamins and minerals. Simple carbohydrates like white flour and all kinds of chips turn into sugar when eaten. Eliminate simple carbohydrates, especially sugar, and artificial sugar substitutes which try fool the body but still can spike insulin and erode your good gut bacteria. Good fats and oils as above in moderation will provide more of the energy you need. Eat them with more vegetables (which gut bacteria to like). Watch how your body responds as you try the changes for a week or more. Some people do well on dairy fats, others don’t. The same with various meats, but real wild-caught salmon seems to have no down side.
The above points may seem contrary to all you’ve heard about diet, and fads are the rule to try to get healthy. But you can research each one online and in books. And decide for yourself. If a special food is being advertised, it would probably be wise to avoid it and find a local farmer’s market or health food store instead. Almost all of the modern diseases come from false data about foods drummed into the public from childhood, often in advertisements.
If you are having trouble making a change and think you need a way to rapidly get a fresh start, an intestinal cleanse that supports your body’s removal of what’s been sitting in your guts, may be helpful. This will often reduce cravings, and make it easier to change your diet.
Supplementing with some basic nutrition can also make a big difference, as often people eat randomly searching for essentials that the body can’t find enough of in the diet. Once supplied with basics, it is easier to choose foods that can maintain that sufficiency.
6. Drink plenty of clean, pure water, preferably with minerals or electrolytes daily. Dehydration is very common. If you are thirsty you are probably already dehydrated. So don’t wait until you feel very thirsty. Dehydration causes body stress. Water used to be a natural source of mineral for us, but that is no longer true. Now in most locations, water is a source of chemicals instead. Count your blessings if you have a source of clean natural water! Consciously seek a way to ensure you can have good water available.
7. Be willing to love: Love is one of the most uplifting experiences. Love banishes stress. Feelings of love and harmony have physical counterparts in your body, lowering stress. You can love family, children, a marital partner, a friend, pets, and groups you enjoy being part of. “Find somebody to love.” Learn to love yourself. If you express love, you will likely be loved in return. Affection naturally elicits feeling from others. Developing relationships based on love and trust can help you to achieve greater happiness.
8. Resurrect your core spiritual beliefs: Each person is a spiritual being. Spiritual beliefs and values are important. They can bring stability into chaos. When you re-connect to your true beliefs you become stronger and more capable of handling life. And this reduces stress.
Does this Work?
Stress reduction can help you lose weight. It can also enable you to be a happier, more able person. Start with whatever is most real to you because each little win makes you stronger.
Once you have changed one habit, go on the next. This is not a sudden weight loss program. If you take the time and discipline to reduce stress and improve your diet you will not only become able to lose weight, but you’ll have the key to improving any other area of your life as well.