Stressed Out?

Exams, family, boyfriend/girlfriend, deaths, assignments, work schedule, money issues, body problems, drama with friends, a parking ticket… the stress! It keeps you up at night, or it makes you sleep in the day, it makes you cranky, it makes you crave junk food, and it can make you fat.

The stress hormone is cortisol, as I'm sure you may have heard. But cortisol has other functions, too.
It regulates your blood pressure and glucose metabolism, and it regulates your immune function and inflammatory response.

Small doses of cortisol are good for you because it provides you with a spike of energy when you need it (think if a bear was chasing you, or, more realistically, your house is on fire). It improves memory function and decreases pain sensitivity (think if you were to get attacked - all of those self-defence skills come back to you and you fight through a stab wound or something crazy like that).

Cortisol is a survival, fight/flight/freeze thing. If it's around for a long time, it will add some padding to you. It makes your body hold on to fat because of survival reasons. It changes up your blood sugar levels and slows your metabolism so even if you don't binge on chocolate and ice cream, you can still gain weight.

Cortisol is also proven to increase fat storage around the abdomen, especially in women. Fat in this specific area is a bigger threat to your overall health because it increases your risk to a variety of diseases, such as diabetes.

Other ways that stress make you put on weight don't have direct connections with the hormone.

People don't have spare time when they have a million things to juggle. There's no time to cook, which means you buy more fast food. There's less time for working out, too. You eat more than you normally do, and you crave more junk food than normal.

If you can't manage well, your cortisol levels stay high even when the actual stress source is gone.

So, you know what to do from here. We all know how to relieve stress. Eat well, exercise every day, call a friend, smell lavender, take a bath, go for a run, read something funny, take a break, do yoga, and deal with issues head-on.

Who wants to deal with weight gain on top of everything else going on? Nobody.