Stop Stressing!

Stop Stressing! 

I personally am effected by stress when I least expect it. It's more of a denial or my effort to suppress the fact that I have stressors rather than attack them head on. I often find myself knowing when a situation will be stressful and telling myself it's not and being effected in a larger way. 

Stress effects our hormones and of course this can slow our progress toward our fitness goals in many ways. 

Let's start with cortisol. Cortisol is a diurnal hormone, meaning levels should peak in the morning to give you energy and decrease throughout the day so you can sleep at night. Cortisol is released when you are stressed acting as an adrenaline response. When stressed your working against the natural diurnal effect and this results in a lack of sleep. We all know how sleep effects our lives and especially our fitness goals.  

Cortisol also aids in fat burning in the absence of insulin <--- so mostly in the morning. This however unfortunate is not normal in most humans. A lot of us "need" coffee or caffeine in the morning meaning the levels are low or skewed. Caffeine in the morning helps spike the cortisol and aid in morning fat loss. 

Receptor responsiveness, inflammation, and dis regulation of hunger hormones are three main weight loss problems directly effected by cortisol release.  

So in a "normal" sense cortisol can aid in fat loss but in excess due to chronic stress it is detrimental to fat loss. 

Cortisol affects the receptor sites of other hormones making the cells less responsive to their signals. For example, Type II Diabetes is a disease where sufficient insulin is produced, but your body’s cells can’t read the insulin signal. This is called insulin resistance. When insulin remains high (as happens when you have insulin resistance) your body will not release fat from its fat cells. This basically traps the fat you have into their cells, even if you go on a diet. 

Leptin is another hormone that plays a key role in losing weight. Leptin is a hormone released from your fat cells and tells you if your hungry or not. When leptin levels are high and your brain can read the signal you feel full and don’t over-eat. If your brain can’t read the signal though you have leptin resistance and feel hungry all the time.

Excessive stress and it’s concurrent release of cortisol negatively effects the receptors for both insulin and leptin, making it harder for your body to read the signals of those hormones.

The second way cortisol negatively effects fat loss is by increasing inflammation in tour body. 

Your body has different types of fat that reacts differently. For example, the fat under your skin – the fat that you can grab—is called subcutaneous fat. The fat that surrounds your organs—is called visceral fat. A "beer belly" is caused by an abundance of visceral fat. Your body will preferentially store more visceral fat when under stress and why the waist-to-hip ratio can be a strong marker for health. 

Visceral fat is considered more dangerous than subcutaneous fat for two reasons. First, visceral fat releases the same inflammatory signals cortisol does. Second, since it surrounds your organs, you increase your odds of organ damage. 

Therefore, stress signals increase your likelihood of storing more visceral fat (unhealthy fat), while having more visceral fat increases the release of inflammatory signals. This causes a cycle of inflammation and increased visceral fat storage leading to more inflammation and so on.

The third way cortisol negatively effects fat loss is through a dysregulation of hunger hormones, in particular Ghrelin and Leptin. Leptin, as mentioned above, helps to control your appetite. When you’re overly stressed, leptin levels will drop, making you hungrier. Ghrelin is a hormone released when you’re hungry and increases when you’re overly stressed. 

The combination of a lower amount of the “anti-hunger” hormone Leptin, and an increase in the “hunger hormone” Ghrelin, causes people to over-eat. In particular, this combination has people reaching for fast-acting carb foods to spike their blood sugar as insulin helps blunt cortisol levels. In other words, you’re more prone to reach for the snickers bar than the broccoli and chicken because your body wants a quick release of sugar to help bring down your cortisol levels. 

This can become another vicious cycle as high blood sugar causes an insulin spike, typically followed by a sharp drop in blood sugar. That drop in blood sugar causes your body to release cortisol to help stabilize your blood sugar. That increase in cortisol though also increases your hunger hormones (in particular Ghrelin) so you once again are more prone to reach for more sugary foods causing a rollercoaster of insulin spikes and dips.

We know this well as the vicious cycle that can't be broken. Understanding what triggers the cycle helps us fight against it. By making better food choices when hungry you can stop the cycle of spiking and dropping hormones. This in combination with de stressing will aid in fat loss and you will feel the cycle finally be broken! 

Lauren Ciurczynski