When you hear the word stress what do you think about? Does your never ending “To Do” list come to mind? Or time pressure, personality conflicts at work, a demanding boss or traffic? This is mental stress but it’s only one type of stress. The stress of meeting a deadline at work may only be the tip of the ice berg when it comes to weighing up all the stressors in your life. There are others you may want to consider because these will almost certainly be adding to your weight problem as well.
Little Checklist of Stressors that cause a stress response in the body and make us overweight.
- The stress response puts our body into survival, famine mode – a state in which we hold onto weight.
- This is not a comprehensive list but if you identify with some of these causes, correcting those behaviours or habits will ultimately have an impact on your health and your weight.
|
Cause |
Some of the STRESSFUL effects in our bodies |
| Eating too many calories and not enough nutrients | Always hungry, nutrient deficiencies may lead to disease. Leads to obesity |
| Preservatives, artificial colours | Adds to the load on the liver and difficulty losing weight |
| Pesticides, metals and other poisons | Can damage cells and cause disease |
| Artificial sweeteners | Long term weight gain |
| Thinking negative thoughts | Increase cortisol levels. Leads to weight gain |
| Putting up with being unhappy | Frustration & resentment which may elevate blood pressure |
| Boredom | A negative state that affects our blood chemistry and not in a good way! Can lead to overeating |
| Unresolved anger, grief, hurt | Chinese medicine correlates grief with the lungs, anger with the liver and resentment with the gall bladder. The mind body connection is real. |
| Unexpressed joy, happiness and appreciation | Believe it or not, good feelings if unexpressed can become negative and fester within us. Leads to emotional eating |
| White flour | Raised blood sugar and insulin. Produces inflammation, causes cell damage and weight gain |
| White sugar | Raised blood sugar and insulin. Produces inflammation, causes cell damage and weight gain |
| Trans, hydrogenated and oxidized fats | Raised blood sugar and insulin. Produces inflammation, causes cell damage and weight gain |
| Alcohol | Poisonous to the liver, increases requirement for nutrients. Feeds sugar addiction |
| Caffeine | Leaches nutrients from the body, elevates cortisol and can lead to weight gain |
| Missing breakfast | A poor habit that leads to overeating the rest of the day |
| Eating too late at night | Overloads our digestive system and doesn’t allow us to rest completely while we’re sleeping – very stressful to the body |
| Eating huge quantities of food | Requires more digestive enzymes than our gut can make. Overloads all systems. Causes us to miss breakfast (see above). Leads to weight gain |
| Medications | Toxic to the liver. Can cause difficulty losing weight |
| Smoking, recreational drugs | Increases heavy metal load and contains other chemicals that can overload the liver |
| Insufficient or poor quality sleep | HUGE stress to the body. Huge! Did I say huge? |
| Misguided ambition | Raises adrenalin and cortisol levels, increases inflammation, can raise blood pressure and risk of stroke. Can cause overeating and weight gain |
| Jealousy | Poisonous emotion poisons the body |
| Self-hate | Poisonous emotion poisons the body |
| Allergies & intolerance | Produce inflammation and seriously challenge the immune system. Require a lot of energy for the body to handle. |
| Poor liver and bowel detoxification | Causes our bodies to become very sluggish. The blood becomes unhealthy and we set ourselves up for all kinds of disease. Linked with weight gain and difficulty losing weight |
| Eating too quickly, rushing | Shuts down our digestive system and decreases our absorption of nutrients. Cause weight gain |
What I love is that a commitment to the time-tested principles of holistic living ie a nutritious diet, fresh air, moving your body, great sleep and learning to love and forgive yourself will help with all of these stressors. But more on that next blog!
Treat yourself with love and kindness this week.
Much love
Brenda
