Stress Produces Body Fat

It won’t be news to anyone that life is stressful. Whether due to work, relationships, money, health, family, or school, many people these days commonly experience some degree of pressure or anxiety about how their lives are going. What you might not know is the connection between stress and belly fat.

An article in the March issue of Yoga Journal magazine notes that “people under chronic stress secrete hormones that cause their bodies to sock away fat around their bellies.” It continues, “Unlike fat that lands on thighs and buttocks, abdominal fat is irrevocably linked to stress.”

In response to stress, levels of the hormone cortisol rise; for people who continue to worry, those levels can stay high. Elevated cortisol levels not only stimulate eating, they ensure that any additional calories are efficiently converted to fat. Worse, under the influence of cortisol, that fat tends to get deposited in the abdomen, a particularly unhealthy place. Big bellies are linked to insulin resistance, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and high levels of triglycerides (blood fats) – which lead to heart disease, stroke, and diabetes, all on the rise in this country.

Barry Glassner, in his book The Gospel of Food, rebuffs the idea that the major cause of obesity is too much food and not enough exercise. His look at the research found that lower income levels are more suspect: rising obesity rates are commensurate with rising rates of economic hardship and insecurity. With increased financial stress, higher levels of stress hormones provoke cravings for “soothing substances” – which tend to be high-fat, high-sugar, high-calorie foods. (My favorite anti-stress foods are pasta with cheese sauce, bread and butter, and ice cream.) In addition, binge eating, whether due to poverty or dieting, causes the body to adapt to the fluctuations of food intake by converting more of what is eaten into fat, in preparation for the lean times.

Plenty of studies have shown that meditation helps bust stress, but if you’re too wound up to sit still, it’ll be hard to still your mind. Yoga poses were actually developed thousands of years ago to get people ready to sit in meditation, so we can look there first for help.

Kim Innes, an assistant professor at the Center for the Study of Complementary and Alternative Therapies at the University of Virginia Health Systems, and Alka Kanaya, internist at the University of California at San Francisco, have each looked at fat storage in the body and its effect on health, and considered yoga for reducing stress-related weight gain.

Thirteen studies of yoga and body composition showed a decreased body weight by as much as 13.6 percent, increased insulin sensitivity, and lower cholesterol. And it didn’t take long: just nine days of practice had dramatic effects. Innes, quoted in the Yoga Journal article, “surmises that stress relief and feelings of well-being fostered by a regular yoga practice serve to rebalance the nervous system.”

While the common image of yoga is of human pretzels, not for the faint of heart or the overweight, it is restorative yoga that is the key here. Emphasizing supported poses, restorative yoga soothes the nervous system, and as the body and mind release agitation, the body begins to heal itself.

Judith Lasater, yoga teacher and author of Relax and Renew: Restful Yoga for Stressful Times, writes, “The antidote to stress is relaxation. To relax is to rest deeply. Relaxation is a state in which there is no movement, no effort, and the brain is quiet.” This is different from sleep, and from watching TV, which engage muscular tension and brain wave activity.

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