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How Does Stress Cause Weight Gain?

How are your stress levels lately?  Are you struggling with your finances?  Struggling with your job?  Do you have troubles in your personal relationships?  Are you carrying a heavy load in school?  Do you have a horse that just won’t behave?

Many of my patients will routinely experience weight loss plateaus due to stress.  Most of them want to know how and why this occurs.  The simple answer is this: our bodies are designed with a “fight or flight” response.

If you’re in the woods and you stumble upon a bear, the sudden recognition of significant danger will stimulate an immediate release of protective hormones into your blood stream including adrenaline and cortisol.  (Your brain also know that those extra few donuts you ate will make you quite the tasty treat for the bear.)

Fight or Flight Causes Glucose in the Blood Stream

Adrenaline increased your heart rate, dilates the blood vessels to your muscles and increases your respiratory rate.  Cortisol is the hormone that stimulates increased glycogen release from the liver.  Glycogen is a form of sugar made available so that you can immediately fight the bear or run from the bear.  The glycogen response raises your insulin level so that that fuel can be pulled right into the cells needing it.  The adrenalin and cortisol, among other hormones, are released so that blood can be shunted from your stomach and intestines to your muscles and brain to more effectively enable you to finish fighting the bear, or out run that drooling growling bear hot on your heels.

Modern Bears

Most of us will never “stumble across a bear.” However, your boss may confront you about how you handled a recent assignment or may drop an extra pile of work on your desk.  You may run short on your finances this month, have a serious disagreement with your significant other, or someone may cut you off in traffic causing a near accident.  Any or all of these stimulate the identical “fight or flight” response. Whether it is an actual bear or the stress from traffic, the same adrenalin and cortisol response occurs.

Chronic Cortisol Release & Weight Gain

How does that keep you from loosing weight?  The elevated cortisol causes a cascade effect raising your insulin levels.  Insulin will remain effectively elevated in the blood stream for the next 2-12 hours.  Insulin is the primary hormone driving and stimulating weight gain.  If you’ve had 2 or 3 stressful events throughout the day, and you have not had the opportunity to physically burn off these stress response hormones, your body will store and/or continue to gain weight throughout the entire day.  If you have been trying to loose weight, the spike in the insulin from this cortisol cascade halts the weight burning process and may actually bump you out of ketosis (the process by which we burn fat as the primary fuel source) for the next 4-12 hours.

Mitigating Daily Stress

How do you prevent this from happening?  A simple 15-20 minute walk 3-5 times per week is enough to decrease the stress hormone surge that occurs from a “fight or flight” response.  Any regular exercise program will decrease these stress hormones.  Adequate sleep also decreases these hormones.

Berberine, the active ingredient in tumeric, is also helpful in controlling blood sugar spikes and helping those with insulin resistance to handle stress and inflammation.  I’ve been using berberine daily for years personally and with many of my patients.  I love it so much, I designed my own formulation. You can find it along with my other supplement line at ketoliving.com.


If your job, school or life is stressful, incorporating an exercise program as simple as a daily walk for 15-20 minutes per day will keep the proverbial “bear in the woods” from catching up to you because of your weight.  Controlling your blood sugar is the other key.  The correct diet and supplements play a huge role combined with exercise.

Check out my diet page if you’d like a copy of my ketogenic dietary program.  Check out my YouTube page for hundreds of free videos and DocMuscles.Locals.com for additional information for my followers.  And, look at my membership programs available  here.

Mom’s Cream Cheese Waffles

Mother’s Day is a great event in our home, and traditionally, it is a chance to make breakfast for Mom.

In our home, Mom has always loved waffles.  But changing to a low carbohydrate diet put a damper on the waffles for a while, until my sweet wife found and perfected the following recipe. (She adapted this recipe fromJennifer Eloff’s Cream Cheese Bran Waffle recipe found in her book, Splendid Low Carbing for Life Vol 1.) These waffles are amazing! They are now lovingly referred to in our home as “Mom’s Cream Cheese Waffles.”

Because I’ve found that Splenda© spikes the insulin and slows weight loss in a significant percentage of my patient’s we’ve changed up the sweetener below.

Breakfast for Mother’s Day in our home consisted of Mom’s Cream Cheese Waffles, freshly grilled thick slice bacon and strawberry flavored homemade whipped cream to top off the waffles and was easily prepared by my 13 year old daughter.  It’s a perfect Low Carb Mother’s Day meal that’ll satisfy the waffle craving and still give the gift of “ketosis”.
Enjoy!

 

CreamCheeseWaffles
Cream Cheese Waffles


Mom’s Cream Cheese Waffles:

16 oz regular cream cheese (softened)
6 eggs
1 cup wheat germ
1/4 cup heavy cream
1/4 cup water
1/2 cup erythritol
1-2 drops liquid Stevia (add to taste)
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking  powder
1/4 tsp salt
In a food processor or electric mixer, blend the cream cheese until smooth.  Add the eggs and continue to blend.  Add the Carbalose flour, wheat germ, cream, water , Splenda, baking soda, baking power and salt.  Continue to blend.
Pour 1/4-1/2 cup onto hot greased waffle iron. Close and cook for approximately 3 minutes.
Yeild: 12-16 “plate sized” waffles
1 Waffle: approx. 7g protein, 9g fat, 1g carbs

 

Fat Thoughts . . .

As a bariatrician, I think about fat all the time.  I guess you could say I have a lot of “fat thoughts.”

I frequently hear patient’s tell me, “Dr. Nally, I’m eating RIGHT, but I’m just NOT losing weight!”

If you’re not losing weight, your not eating correctly. 99% of your weight loss success is related to your diet. We have been poorly misinformed over last 40 years as to what a “correct” diet contains. We’ve been told to follow a low fat diet for the last 40-50 years.  However, it is very apparent as patient’s follow a low fat diet that only a small percentage of them have success in weight loss, and the majority actually gains more weight and remains significantly hungry.  When you look at the body’s physiology, fat restriction only stimulates increased hunger.  The intake of any form of carbohydrate, whether that be simple or complex, stimulates an insulin response.  Based on our genetics, that insulin response can be variable. some of us respond normally and others respond with between 2-10 times the normal insulin surge.  Insulin is actually the hormone that drives weight loss or weight gain.
You and I will not be able to effectively lose weight until we control the response of insulin, and this can only be done through carbohydrate restriction.