We’ve known for a long time that stress causes overeating and weight gain. But there’s another element to it that may come as some bad news.
A new study has found that carrying around that excess body fat can be its own cause of stress.
The study found that the more body fat you have, the more stressed out you feel by day to day activites.
It’s not because you’re thinking about how you should be losing weight. It’s because your fat tissue, which controls your metabolism, can actually cause stress.
So you start out stressed. You gain weight from all the stress you’re under, and then your body gets freaked out at the weight gain and it drives you to stress eat.
But what’s happening inside your body? ##MN_RESP##
The excess fat keeps telling your body to slow its metabolism down. Your body gets overwhelmed by all the messages and causes you to worry and eat and worry and eat.
How do you break in and fix it? That’s the next question researchers want to answer. It could be helpful, since then we’d know how to help chronic stress eaters.
For now, tackle the stress, and then tackle the stress eating. Try some stress relieving techniques, like meditation. Keep some healthy snacks around that you can stress eat. And believe it or not, exercise is great for stress relief. If you attack it one step at a time, you may end up losing weight AND breaking that weight gain cycle.
