I’ve been meaning to talk about stress and weight loss for a while now, so I thought today would be a great day to share some things about stress.

Did you know that stress can keep you from losing weight?  What’s even worse is stress will make you gain weight.  And stress will more than likely show up in our midsections.  I am speaking not only from studies that I have read about stress and its effect on weight loss, but also personal experience.  When my father died in November of ‘05, within 1 month, I gained about 12 lbs. and it was all in my stomach!  I looked like I was about 5 months pregnant.  I had changed nothing - I was still eating the same foods, etc., and it was like overnight, there was this huge weight gain in my stomach.  I was a little concerned and went to my doctor, who kindly explained to me that what I had read about stress and weight gain were true and that’s exactly what caused it.  Once I got my stress under control, it disappeared.  But then….one of my brothers died unexpectedly in February of ‘06 and again - BAM!  Within a month, I had this huge stomach.  Again, nothing different as far as food and drink.  So why is this?

Studies show that stress causes our “flight or fight” response to kick in, which raises our levels of cortisol, which is a hormone that makes fuel more available to our body.  Since stress is an emotional response, we don’t burn off all of that energy produced by cortisol.  Stress may also lead us to overconsumption of comfort foods.  So if you’re trying to lose weight, you have to get your stress under control and keep it managed.  Easier said than done, right?  Let’s see how we can do this.

There are many ways to relieve stress naturally.  Deep breathing exercises, yoga, meditation are all great ways to relieve stress.  Also, there are many all natural products that can help lower stress levels.  What helped me is a product called Stress Relief Complex.  It is all natural and does not contain kava, which has shown to cause liver damage.  It really calms down my stress levels in about 30 minutes or so.  I was so thankful when I found this product because I could not get my stress under control!  I used to take it every single day, sometimes more than once a day, but now I don’t find that I need it as often because I am exercising on a consistent basis, which, of course, relieves stress.

So if you are having a hard time losing weight or packing on pounds and don’t know why, take a look at how much stress you’re under and get busy on getting it under control.  You may find that after you do, your weight loss efforts will start working.