Stress – The Silent Threat to Our Weight

We all have stress in our lives and furthermore we all will feel stress again depending on the events going on around us. Stress is our body’s normal reaction to demand whether it be from work life, home life or any other factor which has a significant impact upon us. I used to work in a very stressful job as a market trader. The stress from my job had a negative impact upon my life: it caused relationship problems and caused me to put on a lot of weight but in this article I will tell you how to harness stress to your benefit and use it to motivate you to lose weight.

When we feel under stress our body’s natural reaction is to combat it. By our body combating stress it causes us to put on weight in two ways. The first is because when we’re stressed the hormone Cortisol is released by the pituitary gland. Cortisol causes fatigue which makes us less inclined to exercise and more importantly negatively affects our metabolism so we cannot digest food quickly enough. Cortisol can only be combated by effective ways of managing your stress which I will outline later in the article. The second way stress causes us to put on weight is by forcing us to comfort eat or drink. Many people see wine as a good way to release stress but did you know that one medium size glass of wine contains as many calories and two packets of crisps! So as you can see it’s best not to hit the bottle to stop stress.

Now I will tell you ways in which you can combat stress and use it to your advantage when trying to lose weight. The image on the right shows stress (pressure) in relation to performance. As you can see the right amount of stress can cause optimum performance which in turn would motivate you to exercise and eat more healthily which in turn will help you lose weight. So stress really can help you lose weight. The other way to use stress when trying to lose weight is to do activities when you’re under stress which are beneficial to your
health such as going for a run or going to the gym. With these activities you kill to birds with one stone. Not only do they help lose stress they also help you lose weight!

Hopefully now you will have more of an idea about how stress affects your body and your weight and the simple steps which you can take to lead a stress free life and lose weight in the process.www.fatlossfactor.com