Last week we started looking at the 8 Reasons You’re Not Losing Weight,even when you seem to be
doing everything right. Number one was Don’t Fall for Gimmicks. This one might have seemed
obvious, but it’s the effects on your psychology. It’s falling for gimmicks or at the very least,
having gimmicks question your current method that derails your efforts. Jumping from one thing to
another and never sticking to anything.
The second one we covered was the lack of sleep and how your body perceives it as stress and the
physiological impact this has on your ability to lose fat. We also discussed how it will impact
your workout recovery and the long term affects this has.
Today, we are going to look at affects Chronic Stress has on your ability to lose fat. We
touched on this a little bit when discussing sleep, but today we are going to dive deeper into
stress and its physiological effects.
I want to start by sharing a story about my first
discovery of how stress triggers physiological changes in the body. Some people think stress
is strictly psychological or behavioral and don’t respect its ability to change your physiology.
I think it’s pretty common knowledge that stress is not good for your health, but unless you
experience the physiological impact you can often under estimate the importance of controlling
stress. I know I did.
My experience with stresses impact on physiology was back when I was in my final days of college.
I was living in Waukesha, but my internship was in Oshkosh. It didn’t make sense to move for
three months. My internship start at 6:00am each day, which meant a 3 or 3:30am wake up when
you have an hour and a half drive. This wouldn’t have been a big deal, but it was an unpaid
internship. I still wanted this internship because I knew what I would learn was much more a
valuable then getting paid, but it also meant I had to work a 4 to 5 hour night job to pay the
bills.
I’m one that once a focus on a particular goal I can get in zone and as Nike says: “Just Do it.”
Unfortunately, it had consequences I didn’t expect. I was sleeping four hours every night for
three months. Even though my mind wasn’t tired, I was willing to do what it took. My body
decided it was time to chill out. I started having stomach and digestive problems. These issues
just went away once I return to decent sleep patterns and allowed my body to rest.
To put this in perspective, I was probably in the best physical shape of my life. I had just
come off my senior year of college football and had really been applying everything I was learning
in my exercise physiology studies. If stress can have that kind of effect on a 21 year old body
in top physical shape, what kind of effect is it having on the many baby boomers struggling to
lose weight?
Let’s look at the specifics and see.
First, as I mentioned last week, the body doesn’t know the difference between psychological and
physical stress. Each one will trigger the release of Cortisol, which will decrease your ability
to release fat as energy.
The second impact stress has is making it harder to stay on a good nutrition plan. A major
contributor is the altering of Serotonin levels in the brain, which is the “feel good” hormone.
An increase in Serotonin occurs when additional stress is present. Serotonin has a direct think
to food cravings.
Let’s think about a typical pattern that can occur for many people. You come home from a stressful
day at work. What type of food do we go after when we are stress? Is it a chicken ***, brown
rice and a salad? Not likely.
Serotonin kicks in and we typically grab for sugar, salty or fatty foods.
What we have to realize is that stress is the one that called for this. We’ve created an
environment to where you are more apt to eat the foods that don’t support our goals. We have strong
chemicals produced by stress in our body creating this response.
You could be trying to be good with your nutrition and working out consistently, but you don’t
always think to evaluate your stress and the role it has on losing fat or fitness goals. You could
have everything on track, but stress will sabotage all your other efforts.
How do we minimize these food cravings?
First, the obvious is to work on stress management. For the purposes of this article we won’t
cover this today. Instead, let’s look specifically at what we can do to address the food cravings.
One of the keys is to eat every three to four with small supportive meals/snacks. This means a
balance meal of lean proteins, fibrous carbohydrates (fruits and veggies) and starchy carbohydrates
(wheat breads, brown rice, sweet potatoes, etc). These smaller and more frequent meals not only
stabilize insulin, control hunger, improve your metabolism, but they also control cravings and
serotonin levels. This can be a whole other topic in itself.
Another affect stress has is on your Adrenal glands. Your adrenal glands end up working overtime
producing Cortisol, which sends a whole series of signals to your body inhibiting the recovery and
building of muscle. Muscle is a critical component to increasing your body’s metabolism. A
decrease in muscle that occurs as we age is one of the contributors to a decrease metabolism and
calorie demand as we get older.
Your Adrenal glands also produce Adrenalin. Most people are familiar with Adrenalin and the surge
of energy that takes place in an emergency/stressful situation. It’s also produced naturally
throughout the day and one of its responsibility is going to a fat cell and opening it up to release
it for fuel.
The Adrenal gland also produces Adrenalin’s sister call Noradrenalin which gets to the fat cell
systemically through nerve endings.
Without getting to technical, just know that your Adrenal gland produces not only the “bad guy”
Cortisol, but the good guys Adrenalin and Noradrenalin. We want the body to release Adrenalin and
Noradrenalin, so we can get to the fat cell and release it for fuel. Without these two, “burning
fat” won’t happen.
When you get into stressful situations for long periods of time, these Adrenal glands get overworked
and no longer produce Adrenalin and Noradrenalin like they should and you start to lose acceptance
of these hormones at the cell receptor site. Your body almost becomes resistant.
This is all a series of events that has a major impact on your ability to lose fat. It not only
affects your eating patterns, but creating a physiological environment not conducive to fat loss.
As you can see stress is by far one of the most overlooked components to losing fat that most don’t
take into consideration. If you feel you have the exercise and nutrition plan down, but just can’t
get the results you want, I would highly recommend you look at your sleep and stress levels. If stress
is currently part of your life, you need a plan to make improvements in this area just like you need
an exercise and nutrition plan.
Next week we’ll look at the fourth reason you may not being losing fat.
Until then, thank you for allowing me to guide you through the health and fitness maze.
In Good Health
Pete Piranio BS, CSCS
Owner/Fitness Consultant
Fitness Together
Brookfield 262-780-6350
Delafield 262-646-5444
Wauwatosa 414-453-9800
Woodbury, MN 651-436-8137
http://www.fitnesstogether.net
P.S. Don't forget to check in and vote for our Fitness Together Transformation Competition contestants
here: http://www.mycommunitynow.com.
P.P.S. If you need help putting together a complete program to achieve your fitness goals and want a
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