Stress and weight gain - managing the connection
posted in Health News, The Daily Diet byThe past couple of weeks have been extremely busy, hectic ones - including traveling out-of-state with my parents to celebrate my niece’s college graduation, and we all know how crazy airline travel is these days - but even when the “busyness” stems from happy events, it can still be stressful on one’s mind and body, especially on our bodies.
So this morning as I was considering how my weight has seemed to yo-yo these past three weeks, it got me thinking about how I handle stress and it’s effect on my weight……..or rather how I’ve learned to manage it over the years. When it comes to stress and weight gain everyone falls into two categories - stress either makes them lose weight or gain weight. This article is not about managing stress, but about how to manage the resulting weight gain (or loss) from stress.
I’m very fortunate that at this point in my life I’m able to work from home and set my own schedule, but it was only seven years ago that I had a very high-stress job helping to build a startup company over a pre-planned short period of time. It meant long days and weeks, often more than 80 hours a week, and even though I loved that job (really!) it was definitely stressful. Finding time to eat anything, let alone something healthy, was difficult and when I did have time I just couldn’t eat much. When things were bothering me, or I just had too many worries, I couldn’t manage to choke down any food. My reaction to stress was to lose weight. “Great!” you’re thinking, “what an easy way to keep your weight down!”……HA! Although my weight was on the low side, I knew it wasn’t healthy because I didn’t feel healthy. And stress can be a ticking time-bomb if you don’t find ways to alleviate it.
So over the past seven years, as my stress level dropped dramatically, my weight has creeped up - fifteen pounds - faster than the normal age-related average gain of one pound a year (all other factors being unchanged, e.g. diet, activity level, general health etc. simply aging will make us gain 1/2 to 1 pound every year after the age of 35 - now you know why I’m doing the Shaklee Cinch Diet). Clearly stress makes me lose weight, no stress makes me gain weight.
For others, the opposite is true - I have friends who head straight to their pantry or fridge when they are feeling stressed - and it shows. Many people take “comfort” in their favorite foods, hence the moniker “comfort foods” attached to many yummy things that aren’t always the healthiest to eat.
So how do you manage stress and weight gain? First, identify which camp you fall into: Do you lose? Do you gain? Understanding you you react to stress is half the battle. Then make a plan based on that - if you’re a Stress-Gainer, try to find comfort foods that are “less bad” for you than others (like substituting low-sugar fat-free sorbet for ice cream), and then when you feel that overwhelming need to turn to food to deal with your stress, make a Promise To Yourself (and I capitalized those words to emphasize their importance - your importance - to improve your health) to do something like drink a full glass (10 ounces) of water and wait five minutes before you dig in. If you’re a Stress-Loser (like me), stock your desk, pantry, fridge, etc. with healthy snacks, and then set a reminder (on your computer, on your kitchen timer - whatever it takes) to stop and eat a little bit every two to three hours.
Either way, if you feed your body with good nutritious choices - even if you have to force-feed yourself :), it will be much better able to handle any stress - in fact it’s critical, since numerous studies have shown that the physical effect of stress causes depletion of several important vitamins and minerals.
If anyone is interested in learning how to manage the underlying cause of their stress, there are a lot of great books on Stress Management
