Stress And Weight Gain: A Connection That You Need To Know

Stress and weight gain have been sharing a very deep connection since forever. However, this connection was found not very long ago, and therefore, people have been having mixed feelings about it. But in this blog, we are going to clear up any confusion related to this connection and tell you how stress and weight gain are related to each other.

Keep reading till the end. Let’s get started

Daily Life And Increasing Stress Levels

The stress levels in your daily life make you want to pull your hair out and scream your lungs out, thereby leaving you frustrated and irritated. This stress not only ruins your mood for days, weeks, or months but also has negative effects on your health. Yes, we are referring to the link between weight gain and stress.

The answer, unfortunately, is YES! It was not just in your head when you noticed yourself gaining weight when you were in a stressful situation, environment, or condition.
Stress and weight gain are linked, and it is a fact that you just cannot entirely ignore it or avoid it. However, you can take measures to deal with it. The dealing part will be covered in our next blog. As for this blog, we will explain the whys and hows of stress and weight gain.

Decoding Stress Related Weight Gain

The science behind stress related weight gain is as follows -

When you are under stress, your body goes into "fight or flight" mode, releasing the hormone adrenaline to aid you in fending off the imagined threat you are experiencing anxiety over.

Your body also releases glucose, often known as sugar, into your bloodstream to help you regain energy to combat this threat.

The hormone cortisol kicks in to give you additional energy to continue dealing with the threat as your adrenaline wears out and your blood sugar levels start to fall.

Cortisol can increase your hunger because it stimulates the release of insulin, which is necessary to keep your blood sugar levels stable. Weight gain could result if you give in to those cravings. Cortisol might increase your appetite while also slowing down your metabolism. This is another method for helping you to conserve energy so you can deal with whatever is happening.

Other Ways Of Stress Related Weight Gain

Some other ways in which stress can make you gain weight are -

1. Emotional Eating

   It is a fact that emotional eating when you are stressed makes you gain weight. Movies might have made it look cool to empty a big tub of ice cream after a fight with your beau or a breakup, but it might not be the thing you would want to actually do.

2. Binge Eating

   You binge eat when you eat a large quantity of food in one sitting due to a negative thought or emotion. Binge eating is different from emotional eating because, in this case, the person almost has no control over themselves and they just cannot stop eating.

3. Eating fast food

   While you are stressed, your body is already making you crave food, and if you give in to that craving and start eating fast food on top of it all, then you are doing everything wrong that you could do to yourself. Fast food is definitely palatable and yummy, but it is also fat-triggering.

4. Drinking Alcohol and skipping meals

   Drinking alcohol is another thing people do when they are stressed. The most popular way for people to unwind is to get drunk and forget about their problems. But this solution is only temporary to start and is also very unhealthy as it causes uncontrollable weight gain.

Similarly, skipping meals because of a stressful environment will only make you consume more calories later.

We Hope That Helped!

We hope this blog was helpful to you in understanding how stress and weight gain are so deeply related.

In the next blog, we are going to tell you the strategies you can follow to avoid getting fat due to stress.

So stay tuned. And to learn more on such topics related to health, check out the blogs on Scitron. And when you are on the website, don’t forget to check out the best sports and nutrition supplements in India from Scitron.