Stress and Weight Gain

When people get stressed they often turn to high-fat, high-sugar comfort foods resulting in bulging waist lines and weight gain. Now researchers at Georgetown uncovered a mechanism that explains why comfort foods and chronic stress results in more weight gain than one would predict based simply on calorie intake.

In a study published in the journal Nature, mice were subject to chronic stress which included standing in a puddle of cold water or caged with an aggressive alpha mouse – poor mice:( Stressed animals on a normal diet did not gain weight, but those on a high-fat, high-sugar diet did putting on more weight than expected given the calories consumed. Both groups ate the same amount of food, but the stressed animals on the high fat diet gained twice as much fat as would be expected, and it was all in their belly area. These animals also started to show signs of metabolic syndrome including glucose intolerance seen in diabetes, elevated blood pressure, inflammation and fatty liver.

Evolution at work?
Lead researcher Zofia Zukowska, theorizes this may be a survival mechanism saying “If you can store fat for times of hardship, you have a fat reserve that can be turned into energy for the next fight.

“The same mechanism may be happening in humans. An accumulation of chronic stressors, like disagreements with your boss, taking care of a chronically ill child, or repeated traffic road rages, could be acting as an amplifier to a hypercaloric diet when protracted over time. Depression may also be acting as a stressor.” – Dr Zukowska

Mechanism for the Stress-Obesity response
The researchers found that a neurotransmitter (neuropeptide Y) and its receptor (neuropeptide Y2) are both activated in fat cells and cells lining the blood vessels of stressed mice. Researchers were able to reproduce weight gain and symptoms of metabolic syndrome by injecting Neuropeptide Y in mice. However when the neuropeptide response was blocked, by injecting a blocker against the receptor of neuropeptide Y, the mice did not gain weight.

Lose Belly Fat by turning off the Stress- Obesity response
You can turn off the stress-obesity response, to prevent weight gain and lose belly fat, by reducing the stress in your life and cutting out the junk food. While stress primes your body for accelerated weight gain, especially around the mid-section, the actual trigger for weight gain is junk food (remember the stressed mice on the normal diet did not gain weight). Taming stress in this 24/7 world is often difficult, but controlling the foods you eat will prevent you from losing the battle of the bulge.

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