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How you cope with stress determines your appetite. If you're a woman, your life is especially frenzied (juggling aging parents, career, spouse, kids), and your hormones — including your stress hormones — are beginning to flood the body somewhat unpredictably. This can result in mood swings, muscle fatigue, loss of memory and intense food cravings. These physical and emotional changes get worse when you harbor chronic, long-term stress that makes you feel hopeless, helpless and defeated. I call this Toxic Stress. It's the only kind of stress that adds weight inside the belly — the toxic kind. How does it do that?

Hormonal

When stress hits, different brain chemicals are released to help the body handle the physical response. One of the chemicals — cortisol, known as the stress hormone — is a powerful appetite stimulant. When you come under stress, cortisol levels in your bloodstream rise. The hormone makes fat cells release fuel for what it assumes will be your fight-or-flight reaction.

But we aren't gazelles in the Serengeti being hunted by lions. The stresses we face in the modern world aren't the kind you run away from. We usually just sit there and get upset and anxious. Meanwhile, our brain just assumes we've gotten really physical with such high levels of stress hormone circulating. So, the cortisol's next job is to refuel us, replenishing what it thinks were the fuels we used.

Toxic Stress

When you're under long-term Toxic Stress, your cortisol is constantly elevated. This leads to real problems. You end up with a big appetite for the special fuels of the stress response — fats and carbs. Ever notice it's not a can of tuna you reach for when you're getting the stress munchies? No, it's almost always cookies, candies, chips and starches. That's how you gain the weight.

Where does the fat go? It's deposited in a unique place in the body – deep inside the abdomen. Everyone's got some fat inside there, even skinny people. However, too much fat inside the tummy is very dangerous, which is why I call this extra stress-induced fat Toxic Weight. Poor lifestyle choices and fluctuating estrogen levels contribute to Toxic Weight as well.

Toxic Weight is the only fat associated with diabetes, heart disease and cancer.

How do you know you have Toxic Weight? Lie down flat on the floor and look down at your abdomen. Does it rise up above your pelvic bones like you swallowed a bowling ball? If so, Toxic Weight is on board. If you have high blood pressure or diabetes, the Toxic Weight is definitely contributing to your condition. So that expanding waistline is more than an eyesore. It can shorten your life.

Toxic Weight Busting Tips

What can you do about stress-induced Toxic Weight? You need to keep your stress hormone under better control all day long. The real goal is to learn to become more stress-resilient. Here's how:

Start with your MIND: Learn how to adapt and overcome whenever life's stresses occur. Learn the fine art of regrouping. Step back and realize your original Plan A approach may not work under stress. Quickly move to Plan B or C and adapt to the new challenge. Desperately holding onto Plan A creates Toxic Stress.

Move to your MOUTH: When you're feeling stressed, avoid processed sugars and starches. If you eat them, the resultant increased insulin levels give you a double whammy. The high levels of insulin induce a binge, and in the face of a high cortisol level, you'll binge on fats and carbs. Eat fruit, crunchy cereal or pretzels instead.

Finally, move your MUSCLE: By getting up and taking a walk, you can increase the secretion of stress hormone-busting chemicals called beta endorphins. Escape for a short walk, lift some weights or just stand up and do some stretches. Get back some of that fight-or-flight physical activity and you'll keep stress hormones under control.

Joyce Walsleben is director of the Sleep Disorders Center at the New York University School of Medicine.

Stress frequently disrupts sleep in many women. This is because stress can affect the arousal/wake system, the neuronal centers in our brain that control whether we are awake or asleep.

Stress can be external, for instance, like the stress that follows a bad day, or internal, as with physical illness or psychological/psychiatric disorders.
There are many ways to combat stress and thereby improve sleep. The first and most important is to recognize the presence of stress. Frequently, stress sufferers are the last to know. If you have to use every minute of the day and can't slow down, you are stressed — even if you feel fine.

Sleep is a process that takes time and can't be rushed. It happens after the wake system slows down.

If you are sad, dull and sluggish, you may have an underlying level of depression. This can be viewed as a stress also, because depression and many other psychiatric disorders use the same brain chemicals as sleep. If the chemicals are out of sync, sleep and wake will be too.

Sleep Tips

For external stresses

For internal stresses

Hook by Ralf Schulze - British Columbia

A man is visiting the city of Vancouver and goes down to the shore. There he see's an old salt sitting on a log. He has a peg leg, hook for a hand and a patch over his eye. The visitor thinks this guy might have an interesting story to tell, so asks him how he got the peg leg. The old salt answers that one-day at sea in the Caribbean he fell overboard and a shark came and bite part of his leg off. The visitor then asks about his hook and the salt says that on another trip to the Caribbean when the yardarm came down and knocked him overboard. Another shark came along and bit his hand off. When asked about the patch over his eye, he replied, "I was in Vancouver looking up at the sky when a seagull went to the bathroom in my eye." The visitor asked that surely doesn't blind a man, the old salt says "That's true but it was the first day with the hook."

For more information on this and other subjects go to Interventions Archive.  The EFAP assists you and your family resolve personal problems and maintain healthy and productive lives. 

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