Eating away your worries?

Renee Singh

Weight watchers better keep a close watch on their stress levels. Stress actually does seriously impact a person’s weight. In the dynamic world today where everything seems to change from moment to moment where conscious evolution seems to be an ongoing process. This process itself could be a reason for stress. 

It is an uphill task for most of us to stay healthy, when we are facing stressors but that is the real challenge. Stress surrounds us constantly, yet we need to realise and understand, how we can keep ourselves physically and emotionally healthy, despite all the challenges, that the world is throwing at us. 

Weight can either be lost or gained due to stress. Eating habits are directly responsive to stress levels. Some people lose their appetite, some gain it, weight behaves like a yoyo balancing itself accordingly. You can change your situation by changing your habits. 

Don’t react, respond

You  can change your response, you could even change the way you respond to a situation. Here again, the conscious understanding of stress is imperative. Then accordingly one can choose one’s ways of solving the stress issue. On a broader scale, we can say that a major culprit in stressful situations is,  the fight or flight response.  This releases hormones like cortisol and adrenaline.

Adrenaline is responsible for preparing the body for action. It also minimizes our desire to eat. Once the effect of adrenaline has worn off, cortisol also known as the stress hormone, hangs around. Cortisol temporarily suppresses non-essential functions such as digestive, immune, reproductive etc. With more cortisol, we crave less healthy food options, such as high sugar and more fatty foods. 

High stress levels lead to a lower metabolic rate. A recent research in US University shows that women with extra stressors burn fewer calories as their metabolism slows down. 

Stay healthy & happy

Since stress is a cycle, we need to make an effort to step away from it. We need to try to incorporate joyful activities in our lives. We need to create a physical and emotional balance for ourselves. We could start with exercise, keep emotions in stability by journaling, use a few known stress relieving strategies and help create a healthy relationship with ourselves. Once the balance is achieved, we are on the road to ideal weight.  So stay focused, stay happy. 

(Singh is a Chandigarh-based psychotherapist)