Five Reasons Why You Need to Control Stress to Lose Weight - Ajit Patel Wellness

t’s disappointing when you embark on a weight loss plan but don’t see the results you were hoping for. You’re putting in all that effort, but when there are no visible improvements to your wellness, you can want to pack it all in and console yourself with cake. However, you may not be accounting for a hidden element in your lifestyle that might be secretly ruining your diet plans; stress. Stress plays a tremendous role in your wellbeing, and there are four major ways in which letting stress rule your lifestyle can hinder your weight loss progress.

1. Cortisol: AFLCA certified personal trainer Shannon Clark, who has a degree in Exercise Science, explains, ‘Cortisol is a particular hormone that will cause you to have a much greater risk of storing abdominal fat…In addition, when there is a high amount of stress moving through the body on a day to day basis, this is also going to increase the level of lean muscle mass breakdown that can occur, slowing your metabolism down as a result. The less lean muscle mass you have, the harder it’s going to be to stay lean over time. Finally, when you’re highly stressed out and cortisol is running through your system, you’ll also be far more likely to retain excess water, which can mask weight loss progress.’

2. Food Control: According to Clark, ‘If you’re highly stressed out, you won’t have as much control over your food intake as you would if you were calm and collected. Stress eating is a big issue for many people and most don’t need to be told the impact this will have on their level of progress. If you’re regularly turning to carb-dense, calorie-dense foods to sooth the emotions that you’re feeling, you know that you’re headed for trouble on your diet plan. Stress and food consumption go hand in hand for many people and will make sticking with that reduced calorie diet feel like mission impossible.’

3. Energy: ‘If you’re feeling very stressed out on a day to day basis, your energy level will be plummeting rapidly,’ says Clark. ‘You’ll find that you feel burnout, worn out both physically and emotionally, and the last thing that you feel like doing will be getting a workout in. Stress has a way of zapping the life out of most people and making you just want to curl up on the couch for hours. If you’re incredibly stressed out, this is something that you need to be assessing. If it’s draining you of your energy level, you need to find a better way to combat stress both for fat loss purposes, but also so that you can maintain better health and overall function as well.’

4. Adrenal Glands: Clark notes, ‘Your adrenal glands are the master regulators of the body and are going to control your hormones, your metabolic rate, along with many other actions of other organs in the body. Stress also wears out the adrenal glands because it causes them to over-secret adrenaline, which is the flight or fight hormone. In times of severe stress, this hormone is a good thing, but when it’s chronically being released, it’s not such a good thing. That’s when your adrenal glands may in fact burn out entirely and when they do, you’ll have an endless amount of fatigue to be dealing with on a day to day basis.’

5. Recovery: ‘If you’re very stressed out on a regular basis, you won’t recover nearly as quickly from your workouts as you should be and therefore will need to spend far more downtime in the gym between your sessions,’ Clark warns. ‘The less frequently you can be doing your workout sessions, the less progress you’ll make towards your end goal – therefore this is a significant hindrance of success.’

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