Adrenal health
Is stress making you fat? Adrenal balance and weight loss
by Marcelle Pick, OB/GYN NP
Too often, women and their healthcare practitioners think weight loss is all about
cutting calories and exercising more. But I have plenty of patients who’ve tried
these avenues with no success. These women are genuinely trying to do everything
“right” for their health. They exercise regularly, eat well, take their supplements,
and so on. But they haven’t lost a pound, and they’re frustrated — and trust me,
I know how they feel, because I’ve been there!
These patients are always surprised when I ask them about the stress in their lives,
and they want to know, What does stress have to do with weight gain?
Key points in this article:
- Chronic stress causes cortisol to increase in your blood, which can increase blood
sugar, increase hunger, and promote more fat storage.
- The body stores “stress fat” in the belly to prepare for a crisis.
- Eating 3 healthy meals and 2 snacks with some form of protein with each can help
regulate cortisol and relay the message that your body is not in crisis mode.
- Finding ways to lighten your stress load, like good sleep habits, deep breathing,
light exercise, and a program like our
Personal Program for Adrenal Health can also help regulate cortisol and
promote healthy weight.
After years of chronic stress, our adrenal glands — which govern our stress response,
help balance a woman’s blood sugar, and regulate many other of our body’s processes
— can become imbalanced. Our adrenal glands are fundamental to our health, and when
they are out of balance, the body prepares for disaster the best way it knows how
— by storing calories. Genetically, some of us are more predisposed to this than
others. But the good news is that if we restore the adrenals to their normal, healthy
function, stubborn pounds often fall away without too much effort, and our energy
returns.
Let’s take a closer look at the adrenal glands, then talk about solutions for healing
your stress response — and finally getting rid of that stubborn weight.
How stress can make us gain weight
I’ve seen stress lead to weight gain over and over — especially as women’s lives
become increasingly demanding. We usually think “being stressed-out” is an emotional
state, but the body understands stress quite physically. And one of the ways it
physically handles stress is by being stingy about how it uses calories, storing
them primarily in the form of fat around the abdomen.
Why we’ve evolved this way has much to do with living in the wild. If we were being
chased by a bear, our adrenals shifted instantly into fight-or-flight mode, releasing
adrenaline and cortisol into the blood. The adrenaline and cortisol helped to give
us that superhuman strength and to quickly mobilize energy production from carbohydrates
and fats. And once the threat was gone, our instincts led us to refuel with calorie-dense
foods that are most readily stored as fat. With cortisol’s influence, we are less
sensitive to leptin, the hormone that makes us feel full, and eat more than we normally
might.
The problem is that this sequence of events takes place whether the threat is real
or perceived. Since most of our modern-day stressors don’t require fleeing or fighting,
we generally don’t need all the extra calories our bodies ask for. What has also
changed is that in the past, stress came and went. Many of us exist now in a state
of constant stress, operating at elevated cortisol levels over long periods of time.
Best place to store fat? The belly
Could adrenal imbalance be causing your weight problem?
- Do you feel bone tired during the day, only to perk up at night?
- Do you tend to nod off at the movies, at meetings, or while reading during the daytime?
- Do you love to snack in the evening and frequently stay up late into the night?
- Do you feel hungry, confused, or shaky when under pressure during the day?
- Do you habitually rely on caffeine and high-carb snacks to boost your flagging energy?
- Have you noticed a “spare tire” growing larger and larger around your
waist each year?
- Are you eating modestly and exercising, but still not losing weight?
If you answered to yes to two or more of the above,
adrenal imbalance could lie at the core of your weight gain.
Women with adrenal imbalance often have a “spare tire,” or what we call visceral
fat deposits. This happens for several reasons. Under normal circumstances, when
we haven’t eaten for a while, our blood sugar (glucose) drops and the brain sends
a message to the adrenals to release cortisol. This cortisol mobilizes glucose (via
glycogen in the liver), amino acids (primarily from muscles), and fat (from fat
cells). This prevents hypoglycemia (low blood sugar), keeping your brain
and body fueled with energy in the absence of food. So cortisol maintains glucose
levels in the blood, while insulin helps usher glucose into the cells.
When we have long-term stress, cortisol and insulin remain high in the blood, and
the extra glucose that isn’t needed for energy gets stored in the form of fat —
primarily abdominal fat cells, or “visceral fat.” Scientists have discovered
that fat cells have special stress-hormone receptors for cortisol, but that there
also seem to be more of these cortisol receptors on the fat cells in the abdomen
than anywhere else in the body! And sadly, visceral fat doesn’t just “sit there”
doing nothing; it’s almost as if this fat is, itself, an endocrine organ that reacts
to the stress response, spurring still more abdominal fat deposition. So the cycle
continues unless we take steps to heal the metabolic imbalance. A good place to
start is with the adrenal glands.
Number one for your adrenal health: Eat!
Some of you may have read my article on
how to eat for adrenal health; everything I discuss there applies here as
well. Here are a few key points.
Eat well, and regularly. Sounds funny, I know — telling
women to eat more instead of less! But if you want to convince your body that it’s
in no danger of starving to death, that’s exactly what you have to do — only make
sure it’s good food that provides nutrients you need.
As I explained above, cortisol is integral to maintaining blood sugar, so it makes
sense that keeping your blood sugar as level as possible lightens the load on the
adrenal glands. Allowing yourself to get too hungry sends the “oh, no! famine is
here!” message and puts added stress on your adrenals, forcing them to pump out
excess cortisol. To prevent this, I recommend you eat well and regularly — three
balanced meals and two balanced snacks per day, spread out across the day to work
with your natural circadian rhythm.
When you eat matters too. Cortisol has a natural cycle
that works with your circadian rhythm. Normally, cortisol is highest in the early
morning and declines gradually throughout the day to help you get ready for sleep.
Because eating always bumps up cortisol, it’s ideal to eat your largest meal in
the morning. Eating within one to two hours of waking helps cortisol reach its optimal
morning peak, replenishes your body, and relieves your adrenals from maintaining
fasting blood sugar levels. Healthy snacks between meals help moderate the natural
downward slope of cortisol levels as the day wears on. If you experience a slump
in the late afternoon, a balanced, low-carb snack around 3:00 PM will help avert
this. I also advise eating dinner early, around 5:00–6:00 PM if you can, and making
this your lightest meal of the day. (For a picture of how this works, see our diagram
of the cortisol cycle, showing the effects of meals and snacks.)
Keep healthy foods close at hand. What you eat is equally
important. And if they don’t have access to healthy food when they need to raise
energy levels, many women load up on sweets and caffeine, because they’re so easy
to get! But this often leads to an even greater drop in energy. When you need a
boost, make sure you have micronutrient-rich foods that support your adrenals, like
asparagus, avocado, cabbage, garlic, ginger, and lean protein. Limit or avoid refined
and processed sugars, other processed foods, damaged fats, alcohol, caffeine, and
possibly gluten. I’ve found that many of my patients with adrenal imbalance are
sensitive to gluten, and do much better when they take it out of their diets.
Pacing yourself to promote healing
“When it comes to dietary supplementation for stress adaptation and cortisol
control, the first line of defense appears in the form of a comprehensive multivitamin/mineral
supplement.... In particular, vitamin C, magnesium, and the full B-complex group
are probably the most important from the standpoint of their direct involvement
in the body’s stress response, but all of the essential and semi-essential
vitamins and trace minerals are needed as well.”
— Shawn Talbott, PhD, The Cortisol Connection, p. 127. Alameda,
CA: Hunter House.
We live in a multitasking world where we’re expected to be on-line 24/7. From cell
phones and e-mail to TiVo and Facebook, we rarely take a break. Restoring adrenal
balance means taking time for yourself, and for many of us, that means slowing down.
I know it seems counterintuitive: we think being “on the go” all the time would
help us to lose more weight. But if you’re tired, wired, and overweight, it’s likely
you will need to lower your stress and heal your adrenals to stop the vicious weight-gain
cycle.
What do I mean by pacing yourself?
- Sleep. Many patients tell me they get a second wind after
dinner, or that they’re “born night owls.” But when you turn your circadian rhythm
upside down, your cortisol cycle can follow, leaving you tired all day and wide
awake all night. You can avoid this pattern by eating less late in the day, ending
all screen time (TV, computer, cell phone) by 8 PM, and making a point of being
in bed, asleep, sufficiently early that you get no fewer than 8 hours of
sleep each night (and more, if you can manage it). Quality sleep is essential for
your adrenals to heal so you can shed those pounds!
- Exercise wisely. If you already exercise regularly, try
easing up for a few months while your adrenals are healing. And try to keep your
heart rate under 90 beats per minute. If you don’t exercise, try walking 15 minutes
once or twice a day, especially after meals, outdoors if you can. Exercise helps
to reduce stress, as long as you are enjoying it, but this is not a time to push
yourself hard.
- Play. For once in your adult life, make having fun a priority!
Many of us forget just how relaxing a few hours of fun or a good laugh can be. So
today I am writing out a virtual prescription for you: “Play!”
- Breathe. Three to four deep breaths through your nose
can slow your heart rate and calm the whole body down. Find time throughout your
day to just breathe, especially when you feel stressed. Learn to recognize the signals
that you need to take a break, and get some fresh air, have a cup of herbal tea,
or simply put your feet up.
Let your body relax and release
In talking with women every day, I know how much we have on our plates. It can seem
next to impossible to take a minute for ourselves! But I also know that weight gain
and lack of energy are serious concerns for women, and that it’s frustrating to
try everything to shed extra pounds without success. For many of us, the stress
in our lives is intimately connected to our weight. Our bodies are wise — when stress
is the predominant state, your body will protect you by holding on to extra pounds.
You can coax your body away from “crisis mode” by healing your adrenals. Doing this
often means taking more time for you — including taking more time with what you
eat, how you sleep, and how you live each day. You deserve every bit of it! And
once you replenish your energy and calm your stress response, you will be amazed
and delighted by how the weight will come off!
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Last Modified Date: 04/15/2011
Principal Author: Marcelle Pick, OB/GYN NP