OK. Enough about my life. You might be thinking "what does this have to do with a weight loss and wellness blog?" Valid question which I can answer in 1 word: stress. During the year and a half after my divorce, I ballooned from 200 lbs to almost 300. I am still working on losing the weight now. There are several reasons that I gained so much weight so quickly:
1. I overate. Many people, yours truly included, are stress eaters. I eat when I am angry, stressed, or upset. It causes trouble when I am pressed too hard, because I tend to overeat junk food (who has ever called broccoli "comfort food"). Despite the fact that I am aware of my stress eating, it still happens when I get very stressed or upset.
2. I didn't exercise. Exercise requires a fair amount of motivation and time. As I learned in my journey to fitness take one, exercise is something you have to commit to and plan for. It doesn't just happen. When your plate gets very full with other events and obligations, "optional" activities like exercise tend to go on the back burner.
3. Body chemistry. When you are under large amounts of stress, your own body chemistry works against you. Your adrenal glands release cortisol, which is the primary stress hormone. Cortisol oversees many chemical reactions in your body which were meant to deal with the difficulties of living in the ancient wilderness. One of those reactions was to prepare for a possible famine. Cortisol does this in two ways. First, it turns off most of your fat burning pathways, and shunts most new calories taken in to the formation of fat. The idea being to store up as many spare calories as possible for the famine to come. Wonderful if you are a caveman trying to survive the winter. Not so good if you live in a country with a KFC on every corner.
Clearly, based upon the above, I screwed up royally. Although I try very hard to take good care of my body most of the time, I handled this stressful year very poorly. For you all, my readers, my failure can be a good thing. I would love to share with you how I should have handled all of this.
Stress Management: The Right Way
1. Don't worry about what you can't control. I know it is difficult. I am not really good at it myself, but much of what we worry about is not controllable. Whether you choose to write down your worries and burn them, or place them on God, or the universe, or whatever you believe in, find a way to focus on what you can control, and ignore what you can't.
2. Make good dietary choices. Just because you may be a stress eater does not mean you have to gorge on junk food. If you feel the urge to eat, use my why/why method to make good food choices. Instead of gorging yourself on fried chicken and mac and cheese, gorge yourself on blueberries. Write down what you are eating and why, and you can identify problem times and foods.
3. Exercise! I don't care what you have to sacrifice in order to do it, but make at least 20-30 minutes a day to exercise. Exercise releases endorphins (to make you feel happy), lowers cortisol, and reduces stress. The more pressed for time you become, the more important it is to exercise.
4. Get plenty of sleep. Another part of our regimen that we tend to sacrifice when busy is sleep. It's hard to dedicate 6-8 hours to being unconscious. The problem is, inadequate sleep increases cortisol levels, and leads to overeating and weight gain.
Had I managed my stress this way, I might still weigh around 200 lbs, and not have to struggle my way through weight loss again. I hope you all can learn from my many mistakes, so that you don't have to repeat my unhappy situation.
M. Jacob Ott, MD
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