Let us hold our hands on that and imagine one of them is the fact that stress or anxiety makes you hungrier, and tempt to satisfy it with unhealthy food? We all understand that stress can greatly influence our lives, however, most people are unaware that the role that it has in a weight loss plan can make or break its success.
In this extensive tutorial, you will learn the role of stress management to weight loss and how including stress reducing activities in your daily life will increase your health tremendously. Let’s dive in!
1. Stress and Weight Gain: The Connection
When our bodies are stressed, it also secretes a chemical substance known as cortisol. Cortisol is actually beneficial in the right amount as it helps stabilize blood glucose and metabolism levels. Though, when cortisol levels stays elevated chronically, it causes oneself to put on weight and probably gain belly fat.
Stress eating is also experienced quite often. In situation stress is meted out, individuals resort to taking foods. In other times, and due to stress, we tend to seek solace in food or seek comfort in it, which we usually find in foods that have a lot of sugar or fats. It also leads to increased energy intake which in turn leads to increased cal limit and contributes to obesity and makes it difficult to strip off those extra pounds.
2. The Influence of Stress in Physical Activities
Stress yet another area it can impact on our exercise regime too. They say when things become tense, one may lack the drive to exercise. Also, stress can cause strain in muscles and muscles’ soreness, thereby making exercise not very enjoyable.
This may form a cycle; stress makes one less active; being less active makes one gain weight; gaining weight may make one more stressed again. It is therefore clear that improving on stress management can help in finding a way of actually breaking this cycle for weight loss.
3. Stress and Hormonal Changes
Stress also plays a massive role on our hormones interfering with the process of shedding extra pounds. In particular, when we are stressed, our body produces more insulin – a hormone that regulates the amount of glucose in the blood. Insulin contributes to glucose metabolism while any remaining glucose is stored as fat. This results in increased ability to store more fats, hard time to lose weight, and may lead to insulin resistance which also hinders weight loss efforts.
4. Sleep: Managing Stress and Losing Weight
Stress and weight control cannot be complete without sleep. It is a well-known fact that when we are tired, our body secretes cortisol, which makes us hungry and probably gain weight. Also, sleep deprivation is likely to affect food selection patterns, making appropriate and healthy choices difficult, while at the same decreasing physical activity thus contributing to obesity.
It is important to enhance sleep quality while using stress reduction methods can also help with losing weight.
5. Effective Stress Management Tools in Reducing Weight
Now that we understand the connection between stress and weight loss, let’s explore some stress management techniques to help you achieve your weight loss goals:
1. Mindfulness Meditation: It is saliently described that the method of mindfulness meditation prevents stress by augmenting relaxation as well as enhancing awareness of the self. You learn some coping techniques which make you more conscious of your stressors in your day to day life.
2. Exercise: Physical activity can also be used in fighting stress as well as are effective and efficient in weight loss. Ensure that you pick an exercise activity that you would like to engage in most they include swimming, dancing or yoga.
3. Healthy Eating: Consuming a diet that is low in sugars and bad fats but high in ‘real’ foods can assist in managing the blood glucose levels and stress.
4. Social Support: Having friends who support the change and family members who encourage you, or being involved in a support group are good during weight loss.
5. Time Management: Caring for yourself and looking at how you can organize your schedule is one of the ways through which you can deal with stress. Perhaps try to learn when to say “no”, to delegate or to ask for professional help where needed.
6. Deep Breathing: Deep breathing exercises are also effective in stress control, therefore improving your general health. If only you set aside five to ten minutes everyday and devote that time to your breath, it will help with cortisol production.
Conclusion
Stress has a great positive connection with weight loss and therefore stress management is very important. Through having knowledge on how stress contributes to the weight issue you can enhance your weight loss goal and better your health.
Please, do not forget that it’s very important to be very tolerant and forgiving to yourself during this period. Although the changes that need to take place should be minimal and lasting in this case the end-product will be faithfully reflected in the results accrued in the long-run. Stress management along with healthy lifestyle behaviours help you reach your goal of weight loss and help you to feel your best!
