how stress and anxiety affect your weight

We can all relate to feeling stressed out and anxious over one thing or another. Stress is a normal experience. We all have stress and feel anxious from time to time.

​Chronic stress and anxiety, however, is a serious problem. It can be detrimental not only to your mental health but your physical health as well.

Anxiety is one of the most common experiences and mental illnesses a person can have. According to the Anxiety & Depression Association of America (ADAA) it affects nearly 40 million adults in the US alone.

Whether you’re diagnosed with an anxiety disorder (like Generalized Anxiety Disorder or Panic Disorder) or you are dealing with chronic stress and constant worry without a diagnosis, it can cause some major issues over time.

It’s important to know exactly what the impact of it looks like so you can recognize it and find ways to cope with it.

So what do people with anxiety actually experience anyways? What does it look like?

some common experiences of anxiety include:

• ​Overthinking or feeling like you can’t get through the day without worrying
• ​Feeling irritable, on edge, and restless
• Feeling tired or weak
• Having trouble sleeping
• Avoiding certain situations or places due to fear
• Avoiding opportunities due to fear
• Difficulty concentrating or focusing
• Sometimes having physical symptoms: gastrointestinal issues, rapid breathing, sweating, increased heart rate, or trembling

Keep in mind there is a wide range of experiences and you may not experience all of these even if you have an anxiety disorder.

It’s important to note there may be other reasons you could be feeling these things so you should never assume you have an anxiety disorder without talking to a doctor.

Now that you know a little more about what anxiety looks like, let’s talk about how all of this can affect us physically.

As if anxiety wasn’t hard enough to deal with, some of the symptoms can cause hormonal or behavior changes that can lead to fluctuating weight or even unintentional weight loss. And although anxiety doesn’t directly cause weight issues, it can greatly contribute to them.

how anxiety can cause weight issues:

• ​It can throw off your hormones. Cortisol is often linked to the “fight or flight” response humans have. It’s a hormone that’s released when we feel we’re in danger or are experiencing stress. The problem is, the hormone itself isn’t aware when the stressor is simply anxiety and you’re not actually under attack. So when you are under constant stress and anxiety, cortisol will keep being released and can cause weight gain, especially in your stomach. Another hormone called ghrelin (also known as “the hunger hormone”) is shown to increase when we worry about all those “what ifs”, which can lead to eating more and eventually, weight gain.

​

• Skipping meals. Usually, we go one of two ways when under stress. You’re either the kind of person who eats too much (maybe because of the point above) OR you could skip meals altogether. Whether it’s because you feel too stressed to eat or you’re so stressed that you forget to eat. Skipping meals can cause both weight loss or weight gain.

 

• Decision making. We’ve all made bad decisions, right? Of course. And we all know that when we’re under stress, we can make some hasty and poor choices we wouldn’t normally make. People dealing with anxiety can have a tendency to make impulsive, unhealthy food choices and have difficulty making healthy choices at all. When your stress is in the driver's seat it can be difficult to see past it and make choices that will be good for you in the long run.

 

• Feeling exhausted and having a poor sleep schedule. Have you ever been so stressed about something all day that you felt exhausted even if you didn’t move for the entire day? That’s because stress is exhausting! It takes a lot of energy from you mentally and that can translate to feeling tired physically. It’s hard to have energy for anything else like working out or even just taking a walk if your brain has already tired you out. And you may be exhausted, but your brain still has trouble shutting itself off. A lot of anxious people end up having a difficult time getting to sleep, wake up frequently, and get fewer hours of sleep than others. Sleep is heavily linked to weight gain and hormone levels.

 

• Eating your feelings. Food is our first comfort in life so it makes sense that it’s a habit to eat whenever we feel any negative emotion. When stressed, some people don’t eat at all and others want to eat everything in sight. It can lead to binge eating and eating mindlessly. You may even eat aimlessly and not realize you’ve eaten a whole bag of chips because you were too stressed for your body to realize it wasn’t hungry, it was just anxious and looking for a solution.

 

• Ignoring your stress. We make things a lot harder for ourselves by pretending the stress will go away by itself. Or by thinking we just have to push through it. It’s SO important to take time to destress (yes, even if you think everything will crash and burn if you stop worrying about it). Without taking care of yourself and finding coping mechanisms for the stress it makes everything worse and rarely helps your ability to actually solve whichever problem you’re concerned about. Studies from the University of Kentucky have also shown that managing your stress can actually be more beneficial to weight loss than simply eating healthily and working out. Stress causes a whole cycle of issues that work directly against weight loss or cause unhealthy, unintentional weight loss that usually isn’t good for you.

Stress and anxiety are unavoidable for all of us, but when you’re dealing with it consistently, it can be more detrimental to your health than you might have thought.

It’s part of why I focus on mindset in my coaching. Even if you’re doing everything right, if you don’t find a way to manage stress, it can be a powerful contributor to stopping you from reaching your goals.

And eating healthily and working out regularly may be a little more challenging when you’re dealing with anxiety, but they can also greatly improve it as well.

If you are struggling with anxiety and stress you should find ways to manage it and of course, if you feel it could be an anxiety disorder, talk to your doctor.

Take some time to destress tonight and remember how important it is to your health. It’s not always easy to prioritize yourself, but it is necessary.