Belly fat is unhealthy is can also lead to disease and illness. How do we get belly fat? Is it from eating too much food, eating too much sugar, not exercising enough or could it be more than just food and activity. Recent studies are finding that too much stress in your life can also cause body fat to be stored.
Stress, Cortisol and Belly Fat
Stress can cause our body to store belly fat. Fat is stored for later use when needed in stressful situations.
But stress has changed in the last several thousand years, but our body’s need to store fat for stressful situations doesn’t know that. Fat being stored for use in stressful situations used to mean in situations like war, fighting off dangerous animals and famine.
Today a stressful situation is a boss who gets on your nerves, not making the project deadline and how to pay the bills. Most of our stress today is long-lived stress, not the fight or flight stress of ancient times. Today’s stress can go on and on and on.
Cortisol, a hormone produced by the adrenal glands and regulated by the pituitary gland, is the culprit in gaining fat. If you don’t have enough cortisol you could feel fatigued or even have chronic fatigue syndrome.
If you get too much cortisol, you can gain belly fat and have a reduced immune system. Some of the jobs of cortisol are to maintain proper levels of glucose (blood sugar) and also to regulate the metabolism of carbohydrates, fats, and protein.
When you are in a stressful situation, your body produces cortisol. Cortisol breaks down fats and carbohydrates in the body for a quick supply of energy for your battle.
Your body readies for the battle, lungs taking in oxygen, pupils dilating, your digestive system shuts down and your brain is thinking. What usually causes these stressful situations?
You might get a bank statement that is completely wrong, saying you owe thousands of dollars in fees. You are in a stressful situation, but your body’s production of cortisol doesn’t know it isn’t a wild animal attacking or a battle about to start.
And all you can do is dial customer service and be told to calm down; they are only there to help when you know they can’t.
You have just been through a cortisol-producing stressful fight or flight situation without any fight or flight, no wild animals and the only battle was with some stranger on the telephone. If you actually got the problem resolved you feel it was worth it.
More times than not, nothing was solved and you were told someone would get back to you in a week. That only prolongs the stressful situation for a week or longer.
Robert M. Sapolsky, Ph.D., a professor of biological sciences and neuroscience at Stanford University states that “If stress and cortisol levels stay high, so will insulin levels”. And a constantly high level of insulin can lead to insulin resistance and cause the body to store fat.
The constant levels of stress and high cortisol leads to excess glucose production in the body which then causes the excess glucose to be converted to fat and then to be stored as fat, in the abdomen.
After the battle, cortisol promotes appetite, when the stress passes; cortisol promotes hunger to regain strength after the stressful fight against a wild animal or in battle.
Now you might feel hungry, yet you didn’t really use any of the fats or calories battling the person on the phone. When the stress continues and is ongoing, the hunger continues to refuel from battles we never fight.
Self-Induced Stress
If our daily life and society aren’t stressful enough, we cause much of our own stress. Many people will overreact to a situation and all of us probably overreact sometimes.
We induce more stress ourselves by drinking cups and cups of coffee every day. We get super-sized cups of coffee and when that isn’t enough we get the caffeinated energy drinks.
So we are in a constant state of self-induced cortisol-producing stress with no fight on our hands. In fact, we are sitting down for most of our stressful lives.
According to Shawn Talbott, author of The Cortisol Connection, 200 mg of caffeine, about 2 cups of coffee, will increase cortisol levels by 30% [1]. It is not just coffee and tea; herbal stimulants like yohimbine, yerba mate and guarana also increase cortisol.
Cortisol and stress also cause aging, so the next time you feel burnt out, it is stress and cortisol that causes that feeling, and you are aging more from the stress.
How to Beat Stress
Try not to overreact and learn to stay calm in what are usually minor stressful situations. Think that some if not most stressful situations can be a learning experience. Meditation can be very helpful and it does work in prolonged calming.
Herbs and Supplements to Calm You
There are some herbs and supplements that can help take the edge off of your nerves, like:
- Lavender oil is a relaxing scent that can help you get a more restful sleep.
- L-Theanine is a non-protein amino acid that is mainly found in green tea. It is excellent for producing a relaxed mental state while also giving you clarity and focus.
- Bach Rescue Remedy is a product that you spray on your tongue. I have also used this successfully to feel calm after a stressful event or day.
GABA is another supplement that can relieve stress and anxiety.Anything you can do to control your stress along with a healthy diet will help you reduce belly fat and feel better.
About the Author
Sam Montana is a certified Food Over Medicine instructor from the Wellness Forum Health Center and certified in optimal nutrition from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
© 2010-2019 Sam Montana
