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Is Tension Making You Fat?
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 High stress levels can lead to an increase in blood pressure, which can be potentially fatal. Too much stress can also lower your sex drive, and make you more irritable and moody. All this is common knowledge, wouldn't you say?
However, did you know that too much tension could also make you FAT? If you're gaining weight and you're not sure why, do read on to know how tension can make you fat and what you can do to avoid that.
The Relation between Tension and Weight Gain
Most people think that since tension is all in the head, it can only affect you emotionally. However, stress actually brings about physical changes in your body, none of which are good.
Stress and physical changes:
When you get stressed, your body produces a hormone called cortisol, along with which, adrenaline starts flowing through your body. These hormones pump sugar into your blood, which gives you the energy that you need to fight off the tension that is bothering you. Now, in olden days, stress was caused due to the danger of some wild animal bearing down on you, or when people were at war. The excess sugar thus pumped into the body, was used up during all the physical exertion that was required to relieve the stress.
But in today's times, tension comes in the form of financial worries, work pressures, or family issues. In fact, something relatively simple such as watching Angelina Jolie or the hot and sexy Bipasha Basu on TV can give men added stress! Now all these tensions do not put you in any immediate physical danger, but your body cannot differentiate that. It goes about its business of pumping extra sugar into your blood, which eventually gets deposited as fat because you don't really do anything physical to burn it off!
So, the more stressed you get, that much more cortisol runs through your body, and that much bigger your thighs and stomach get!
Stress and cravings:
Another way in which stress makes you fat is by making you crave high-calorie foods. Due to the hormonal changes that tension brings about in the body, you start craving foods that are rich in fat, because eating them brings about the release of feel-good hormones in the body.
So essentially:
Being tensed = release of cortisol and adrenaline = craving and eating foods like chocolate, pastries, pizza, burgers etc = release of happy hormones = more eating of high calorie foods = becoming FAT!
Thus, as long as you're stressed out, the vicious cycle continues and you keep putting on weight.
Stress and insomnia:
Lack of sleep is another side effect of too much stress. Tension causes you to lie awake in bed at night, and when you don't get the rest your body needs, the result is - you guessed it right, added fat!
So what exactly should a person do to avoid putting on the kilos; after all it is not easy to be completely tension free, is it?
You're right. No one can be completely stress-free, but here's how you can manage your stress and de-stress yourself:
- Try and keep your mind and body relaxed. Meditation, yoga and relaxing massages are a great way to do so.
- Spend more time doing things you like to do, such as travelling, spending time with your loved ones, and taking in a movie and dinner every now and then.
- Be aware when you're getting stressed and consciously force yourself to calm down. Simply close your eyes for a few minutes and take deep breaths. This will help to lower your immediate stress considerably.
- Keep your fridge stocked with healthy foods such as fruits, salad sticks, low fat yogurt, nuts, multi-grain bread and skimmed milk so that you're not tempted by high-calorie foods when you're stressed.
- Never skip meals. If you keep yourself hungry for long periods of time, it will be that much more difficult to avoid those tempting pastries and chocolates when tension strikes.
And if you can't keep your tension in control through the above, you may just have to stop watching those sexy bodies on TV altogether - now there's a good enough reason to stop stressing!
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Ruchi Agarwal
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