New Fat-Busting Science – Fact Or Fiction Part 2

Posted February 23rd, 2009 at 7:22 pm in Low Carb

Stress Can Make You Fat

I believe that stress is the main reason I fall off the healthy food wagon occasionally, finding it near impossible to resist my old comfort foods when stress gets the better of me. It's so easy to say to yourself, whew!, I had a really hard day, I deserve a "fill in the blanks" – cocktail, chocolate bar, pasta dish, mashed potatoes, bread, etc. All the stuff that got me into trouble in the first place just cause I had a total jerk for a boss.Toss in a couple of financial issues and watch the high-carb food monster take over!

The problem is that the boss ain't going anywhere soon and I am the one that suffers the consequences of a binge. While it feels heavenly to my taste buds and soothes my stress hormones (yes, there are such things) giving in to carb cravings because of stress at work or kids or bills, etc, is just going to make things worse. When the last donut, cookie, cake, pie, etc has slid down the high-carb highway into my stomach all I have to show for it is a sweet taste in my mouth and a bitter reminder of my weakness for sugar. Plus I just added more negative energy to my stress levels by giving in to temptation. How can sugar make you so high and then so low within minutes? Why can't I capture that exact feeling of guilt and failure that I feel when I cheat before I eat the high carb stuff – what rotten little devil on my shoulder makes me do it?

Do something besides eat when you are stressed out, make time in your schedule for stress relief of some sort such as yoga, laughing hysterically or even, God forbid, exercise. I make mosaics when I feel the need to distract myself from thoughts of sugarplums dancing in my head – mostly because I get to smash things with a hammer and it keeps my hands busy. I drink a lot of water doing this and I feel better about myself when it's time for bed and I didn't eat that ice cream bar for my night time snack.

I also learned as I got older not to be so hard on myself when I did stumble and I have managed to lose considerable weight because I didn't give up on my whole weight-loss plan just because of one bad day. You gotta get right back on that horse if you want to succeed. The other thing I discovered was when the weight does come off – the stress levels go down – go figure!