Monday, May 5, 2014

How Stress Impacts Weight Loss

Most people don’t realize how much stress can impact a person’s weight loss plan.  You could be doing everything right (i.e. eating healthy meals and exercising regularly), but if stress is a major component of your daily life, it could be sabotaging all your fitness goals.

Let’s face it – in today’s world, we all have some type of stress – whether it is from work, school, relationship problems, or a combination of many things.  If you’re like most people, when you encounter stress, you will likely go on an eating binge and feel unmotivated to exercise. 

Another facet to losing weight is making sure you get an adequate amount of sleep each night (7-8 hours).  When you’re stressed out, your sleeping patterns can become erratic which can inhibit losing weight.  When you have a lot on your mind, you tend to wake up throughout the night and have trouble falling back asleep.  This certainly doesn’t help your energy level the next day.  To gain energy from lack of sleep, most of us refuel with food (probably not the healthiest foods either).

Despite the stress we all experience in life, there are positive ways to deal with it.  Rather than turning to food, why not go for a walk, join a yoga class, listen to calm music, read a book or watch your favorite movie.   What ways do you de-stress at the end of a long day?


For more insight on your personal stress level, take this short 20-question quiz to find out how stressed you are.



Reference:
http://www.prevention.com/sites/default/files/images/news/featured_images/stress-628x363-TS-136262094.jpg

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