Metabolic Types and Stress

Two other factors that affect your weight loss and or gain and your diet is your metabolic type and the amount of stress in your life. There are those of us out there who are the sports cars and those who are trucks. You have to match the gas with the vehicle. Or in other words match your food with your internal metabolism.

Stress plays a factor here also in that stress produces cortisol and we know that cortisol increases belly fat. Cortisol also leads to carbohydrate craving which adds to your problem. Look for ways to reduce your stress and thereby your cortisol levels.

Muscle and Cortisol

There has been a lot of talk about cortisol and how it increases fat stores, especially in the abdomen. What you may not know is that cortisol can actually destroy muscle fibers. A study done with women taking contraceptives and those not, completing 10 weeks resistance training with an exercise physiologist, demonstrated a significant difference in these 2 groups. The women who were taking contraceptives, showed higher levels of cortisol and gained far less muscle mass.

Women who were not taking contaceptives had 60% more muscle mass. So if you are taking contraceptives and wondering why you are not gaining muscle mass, are you taking contraceptives?

Increasing Obesity

I feel the need to caution everyone against obesity during these hard economic times. The tendency to buy cheaper foods may result in an increase in weight gain. As you know, the increase in weight gain leads to more illness.

This isn't the only problem with increasing obesity during tough economic times. There is an increase in stress during these times which will cause the release of cortisol which causes an increase of the fat stores especially around the abdomen.

The word here is to be cautious about not only what you are eating but what your children are eating as well.

Rest for Brain Health

The last thing I want to mention about brain health is rest. Getting into good sleep habits is important for the brain. Research has shown that people who have slept only 4 hours a night have an increase in a hormone called cortisol. Cortisol is a stress hormone which is related to the deposition of fat in the abdomen. Cortisol also has an effect in the brain.

The area of the brain where memory occurs is the hippocampus. When cortisol levels are high, this area of the brain begins to shrink. By increasing sleep to 8-9 hours, the amount of cortisol drops significantly. The other thing about cortisol is that when the levels are high, the brain cells are unable to produce energy to function.

I'll talk a little more about sleep again tomorrow.