5 Sneaky Ways Stress is Affecting Your Weight Loss

Guest Author: Molly McNamee, Online Fitness Coach

Molly McNamee is back on the blog with another great article! Molly is the founder of MFit Workouts and a friend of Full Bloom Acres Wellness. Molly experienced chronic stress and anxiety for most of her life. But six years ago, that chronic stress took over every aspect of her being. She was 30 lbs heavier, having daily panic attacks, finding it impossible to sleep, experiencing severe bloating, and feeling completely consumed by her daily stress. It was through hitting rock bottom that she discovered that the workouts she was doing were causing her body to produce too much cortisol which made her stress skyrocket and her body cling to body fat. Molly’s program helps other people avoid the same fate.

Everyone always talks about how diet and exercise are the keys to weight loss. But there is another big piece to the puzzle that you may be missing. 

Your stress! 

You can do everything “right” – You can exercise all day and eat super healthy, but if your body and mind are stressed out, then, unfortunately, none of that is going to matter. 

Your body will continue to cling to body fat, regardless of how hard you try. It will be like trying to dry your hair outside in the pouring rain. 

It just won’t happen unless it stops raining. 

Your stress is like the rain, preventing you from seeing any progress. 

There are a few different ways you can be stressed, and you may not even recognize some of them as stress! 

Your life could just be stressful right now. 

Perhaps you are going through some personal trauma. Maybe work is insane and all-consuming at the moment. You may be entering a new stage of life and feeling a bit overwhelmed by all the change. Or maybe you are trying really hard to lose weight and frustrated with your lack of progress every time you step on a scale. 

You may have high-functioning anxiety. 

It is possible nothing specific is bringing you stress, you just live with an underlying level of anxiety at all times. Your anxiety may be manageable currently, but you know the smallest thing can set it off. 

Finally, you may not feel any mental distress at all, but your body is stressed. 

Sometimes you can get so good at enduring stress that you don’t even realize when your body is flooded with it. We all get used to existing a certain way. And there is a chance you are living with a lot of stress right now without even knowing it. 

If you feel chronically tired, unmotivated, and bloated. Or if you get sick frequently, wake up with random bruises, have insomnia, or feel your heart racing at different times of the day. These are all signs of physical stress.

If you want to successfully lose weight, then we need to get this stress out of your body! There are five things that are most affected by chronic stress that we need to talk about. These are the five things that are stopping you from reaching your goal weight. 

Your metabolism 

Stress can slow down your metabolism, which makes it harder to burn body fat. 

Metabolism affects how many calories you burn as you go about your day. A fast metabolism allows you to burn more calories by simply existing. A slower metabolism means your body is burning fewer calories throughout the day. If you have a particularly slow metabolism, it can be hard to burn enough calories to successfully lose weight. 

Your food choices 

When your body is stressed, and your stress hormones are imbalanced, you will crave sugary, fatty foods. You will also reach for snacks more often. A lot of people call this “stress eating.” 

If you are trying to lose weight, this is obviously an issue. 

And what I often see happen is, people will get stressed about their stress eating – which just makes the stress problem worse. 

Your gut health 

Stress can absolutely wreck your gut. And when your gut is upset, you will experience bloating and inflammation. And while bloat isn’t “real weight,” it can make you feel like you aren’t losing weight which can impact your mental health and motivation. 

Inflammation in the gut also makes it difficult to properly absorb nutrients, like protein. So you may be eating all the right things to help you build lean muscle, but not getting the benefit from that food. 

Your sleep 

Stress can lead to fatigue, insomnia, and restless sleep. And bad sleep can feed stress. So you can really find yourself in a vicious cycle of feeling stressed, not sleeping, and then becoming more stressed because of the lack of rest. 

If you aren’t getting proper rest, your body will start to produce more of the hunger hormone, ghrelin. This will lead to you feeling more hungry.

Without proper rest, you will also have a difficult time exercising… and if your metabolism is slow and you’re stress eating and feeling super hungry, then you really need to be working out. 

Your cortisol 

Your stress hormone, cortisol, is the biggest thing affecting your ability to lose weight. 

If your body is chronically stressed, that means it is regularly producing too much cortisol. And that impacts a lot of key functions in your body.

The function that probably frustrates you the most is your ability to lose weight. High levels of cortisol cause you to put on weight and store body fat. So you may even gain weight while dieting and exercising because of this hormone. 

I have actually written a whole ebook on cortisol for you! 

The ebook, Conquer Your Cortisol, will break down exactly what the hormone does, how to tell if your body is producing too much of it, why that matters for your weight loss journey, and how to adjust your lifestyle and workout routine to lower your cortisol levels so that you can permanently lose fat. 

You can download Conquer Your Cortisol for free here or click the button below. Read through this ebook to learn how to get stress to stop getting in the way of your weight loss journey.

About the author:

Molly is the founder of MFit Workouts. She has been an online fitness coach for 10 years. Molly experienced chronic stress and anxiety for most of her life. But six years ago, that chronic stress took over every aspect of her life. 

She was 30 lbs heavier, having daily panic attacks, finding it impossible to sleep, experiencing severe bloating, and feeling completely consumed by her daily stress. It felt like she had NO control over her body or mind.

It was through hitting rock bottom that she discovered that the workouts she was doing were causing her body to produce too much cortisol which made her stress skyrocket and her body cling to body fat. 

Once she realized that, she wanted to develop something so that no one else would ever have to experience this again.

Molly can’t wait to share with you the strategies she used to reduce both her stress AND body fat, and keep them both away for good. 

Connect with Molly on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, or on her website. And check out the previous article she wrote for Full Bloom Acres Wellness here.  ​​