Eating healthy and exercising regularly aren’t the only two factors for healthy weight loss. Your stress levels significantly impact your weight and high levels of cortisol in your body can cause many health issues. Worse still, increased stress levels lead to stubborn belly fat which can take double the time to lose.
Read on to learn more.
Unhealthy Sleeping Patterns
Stressful and anxious thoughts can lead to overthinking, making it difficult to sleep at night. An unhealthy sleeping patterns increases your hunger hormones and decreases your body’s metabolism rates, leading to more weight gain.
To avoid this, it’s important to practice mindfulness and deep breathing to clear your head.
Stress Eating
Emotional eating is one of the largest coping mechanisms for dealing with stress. It usually consists of binging on unhealthy, sugary foods referred to as “Comfort foods.” And naturally, stress eating leads to increased weight gain.
A solution is to keep track of your food through journaling. This will help you understand why you’re eating certain foods when feeling down or depressed and help you get to the root cause of your problems.
Additionally, meal planning will enable you to stay organized and track your calorie intake to avoid binging. It’s also recommended to find healthier replacements for your comfort food.
De-stressing
Stress can significantly increase weight gain and be detrimental to your health. Adopting healthier ways to manage stress will not only help you maintain your weight but also improve your overall health and wellbeing.
