Stress and Weight Loss
What is the connection between stress and weight loss? It's well known that not everybody is gaining weight during stressful periods, and some people even report losing many pounds during these unfortunate events.
To get a clear idea about what's going on, let's look at how your body is making use of nutrients during “normal” times, and how this process gets reversed during a crisis. Depending on the gravity of the event or individual differences in personality, stress and weight loss may occur.
As you may know, after eating, your body has to digest the chunks of pork and chocolate cake, and reduce them to simple molecules – amino acids, glucose and fatty acids.
I guess you didn't expect that your body can make use of the nutrients by grafting a chicken breast in your muscles, or pouring a few egg yolks in your fat stores. (Bear with me, and you'll understand immediately what stress and weight loss have to do with this analogy.)
These molecules are then absorbed in the blood stream, and used for whatever your body plans to do with them, according to its needs and what you eat.
When you gorge on turkey and pie on Thanksgiving, and feel relaxed and sleepy afterward, the excess calories will be stored because your body has far more energy available than it needs to take a nap.
When this happens, like a good investor who doesn't keep his wealth underneath the mattress, your body will convert these molecules into more complex storage forms – enzymes in fat cells will combine fatty acids and glycerol to form triglycerides, your cells will bind series of glucose molecules together to form glycogen, or enzymes in cells throughout your body will stick long strings of amino acids and form proteins.
During a stressful period, the above process gets reversed. Like the investor, who during a crisis will access his bank account and liquidate some assets, your body will use its stored energy to face the emergency.
Its mutual funds and government bonds (triglycerides, glycogen and proteins) will be again converted into simple molecules, and used to fuel the energetic needs.
This energy mobilization is mediated by stress hormones (cortisol, glucagon, adrenaline and noradrenaline) that break down again the stored nutrients into glucose, free fatty acids and amino acids. They also inhibit insulin, and this will further ensure that any energy storage is halted.
Continuing the analogy with the investor (which is actually taken from Robert Sapolsky's excellent book Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers), amino acids are not a reliable currency. Therefore, your body prefers to send them to the liver to be converted into glucose, which is a much better source of energy.
Similar to the investor, who has to pay a penalty for retiring his/her term investment before maturity, your body has to pay a price for all this resource mobilization. In the same vein, converting complex storage forms into molecules is an expensive process that costs energy.
As a result, when you are chronically stressed, this metabolic stress response is triggered back and forth, so your resources will be wasted away on penalties, and consequently body weight will be lost – not necessarily fat.
My point is that there is an obvious positive correlation between chronic stress and weight loss, but this occurs only when the stressor is activated continuously, and the recovery period is compromised. Otherwise, you may gain weight because your appetite would increase considerably.
The keyword here is “chronic”, which means a prolonged stress period. It can be something irreparable such as a death or some other tragedy, so in this case it's pointless for me to give you advices. The only thing I would say, if it makes you feel better, is that time is the cure for everything, and you won't feel always the way you feel now.
Most of the time, stress and weight loss shouldn't go together, but some people have the talent to transform any inherent unpleasant event in fatal problems. They keep regretting their previous decisions, and spend their lives in a continuous state of frustration and anxiety.
A Little tale about eagles and chickens
A farmer found an eagles' egg, and put it in the nest of a backyard chicken. The eaglet grew up among chickens, so he was doing exactly what chickens did (clucking and flying a few feet in the air) because he thought he was one of them.
One day, as our eagle was scratching the earth for worms, he saw a grandiose bird flying graciously in the skies. Intimidated, he approached one of his fellow chickens: “What is that?” he asked. “Oh, that's the eagle, the king of birds,” the other said. “He belongs to the skies and we, chickens, belong to the earth.”
The years passed by, and our eagle grew old. He never thought again about the majestic bird. One day he died, a chicken for what he thought he was. You may wonder now what chickens have to do with stress and weight loss. That's exactly how our mind function as well.
Remember, perception is your reality, and it's very easy to get locked in a mental labyrinth. So don't magnify the problems that don't merit too much attention because you'll fail to get the most from your life.
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