Wonder why you keep gaining weight and failing in so many diets? Then, maybe you need to DISTRESS yourself..
There are so many people out there keeps failing on losing weight or craving sweets and junk foods after they lose weight. I believe this is because they haven’t resolved the real problem, which is stress.
Say, you are a student and a part time worker (based on my own experience). Your tuition fee is due next 2 weeks. You’re panicking because your savings will not reach the target. Then, you calm yourself down and come up with a strategy to work extra hours. Then, you forget that you need to finish the assignment and could not work extra hours. Then you calm yourself down again that you might get extension day for your assignment by contacting your teacher. Then your boss calls you that you might not be working next week, as it is very quite at the shop. So it goes throughout the day.
So, what you are experiencing is frequent intermittent stressors. And what is going on hormonally in your body are, first, during a stressful condition your hypothalamus (region of the diencephalon forming the third floor of the third ventricle of the brain) will secrete CRH (corticotropin releasing hormone) within a few seconds. CRH will promote secretion of ACTH (adrenocorticotropic hormone) that takes about fifteen seconds to go up. This hormone influences the activity of the adrenal cortex which then secretes steroid hormones glucocorticoids and mineralocorticoids, which takes many minutes to surge within the bloodstream depending on individuals.
Back to the CRH, this hormone is important for suppressing appetite and your stored energy is mobilized. However, even though this hormone helps with losing appetite, it is not advisable to take this hormone to lose weight because of the other function of this hormone, including heart racing, irritable, hyposexual and feeling jumpy. That is why you’ll feel not hungry when you’re stress because a tiger is approaching you, and your muscles are ready to be used for a quick runaway.
And when the stress is over and you feel calm, then your body is in recovery phase. It only takes a shorter time to remove CRH from the bloodstream; however it takes a while to remove glucocorticoids as it takes a while too to secrete it. Glucocorticoids are important for stimulating your appetite, as you can imagine, after being chased by a tiger you must be hungry! Unfortunately, this hormone don’t just stimulate appetite – they stimulate if preferentially for foods that are starchy, sugary, or full of fat – such as cakes, milk chocolate, ice creams and fatty McDonalds!
So, imagine that you have so many stresses in one day and then you’ll release these hormones throughout the day. As it is quite a while to remove glucocorticoids from your bloodstream, then you’ll have fatty food cravings through the day. So, to make it simple, you stress a lot, you eat a lot, you eat a lot, then you have a lot of fat and sugar in your bloodstream.
More over, very full fat cells secretes a lot of leptin, which tell your brain that you’ve eaten a lot and you need to stop eating (the feeling of full). Unfortunately, the stress hormone glucocorticoids make the brain less sensitive to leptin, so you eat even more! As a result, you can end up getting diabetes or atherosclerosis.
Sometimes, people wonder why they get fat around the belly while others get fat in their hips. As I mentioned before that glucocorticoids are important to increase appetite, but they also increase the storage of that ingested food as a phase of recovery from stress response; and ideal storage for the energy for the next stress. Fat cells located in your belly area are called visceral fat. Meanwhile, the fat cells around your hip is called gluteal fat. Some people will store it in the belly (apple shape), while others store it in hip areas (pear shapes). This will depend on individuals, heredity is one but hormones are also involved. At menopause, estrogen production decreases and the ratio of androgen (make hormones present in small amounts in women) to estrogen increases. The androgen hormone is linked to increase abdominal fat after menopause. Lastly, why most people store it in their belly as abdominal or visceral fat, because they are more sensitive than are gluteal fat cells, due to more receptors in abdomen to respond glucocorticoids.
Now, the trouble is, when you have excess fat in your abdominal area, you are increasing your risk for metabolic syndrome condition and cardiovascular disease. According to professor Sapolsky in his book ‘why zebras don’t get ulcers’, this is probably because fat released from abdominal fat cells more readily finds its way to the liver (in contrast to fat from gluteal fat stores, which get dispersed more equally throughout the body), then the liver will convert the fat to glucose, which then will elevate your blood sugar and insulin resistance. Not only that, liver can influence the production of blood lipids. That is why visceral fat is directly linked with higher total cholesterol and LDL (bad) cholesterol, lower HDL (good) cholesterol, and insulin resistance. And not only that the fat in your abdomen can squeeze other organ around your abdominal cavity. Scientists are also learning that visceral fat pumps out immune system chemicals called – cytokines – for example, tumor necrosis factor and interleukin 6 – that can increase the risk of cardiovascular disease by promoting insulin resistance and low-level chronic inflammation.
So, enough of that cause I know, it makes you stress even more. What can you do about it? There are so many strategies to distress you; however, it will vary upon individuals. As a general there are 2 types of coping with stress. First is avoiding the stress or managing the stress. This can be done through meditation or praying if you are religious, counselling, doing stress management, or even just by doing positive thinking all the time..
Lastly, the most important part about weight loss is exercise and eats smart. Regular exercise not only helps with weight loss, it will release endorphins and other ‘happy hormones’ in your body, promoting a feeling of wellbeing, helps release built-up tension in the body, and some forms of exercise allow you to be social, which can also be great for stress reduction. Eating smart means the diet isn’t high or low in anything. It’s about adequate amounts of proteins, carbohydrates and good fats (olive oil, avocados, sesame, pumpkin seeds, etc.), however processed food is strictly prohibited.
And just like the old saying ‘Don’t Worry Be Happy’ ;)
