Stress Can Make You Fat and Sick

If someone were to ask you, “When is the last time you were stressed?” you likely wouldn’t have to give it much thought. If you’re like most people, the answer would be, “Today.”

The reality is, we live is a stress filled world. Yet, we don’t have to let stress work against us.

But if you don’t get stress under control, there’s a good chance you will experience problems that could have been avoided.

General stress coupled with emotional stress is associated with innumerable problems including being overweight and underweight. And eating food that is not right for you causes you more stress! Accumulated stress overloads the body and is the beginning of all disease.

I work with clients from around the world who seek answers to their food challenges. One such client is Vi. Vi came to me seeking answers to the challenges she and her husband were dealing with.

Below is an excerpt from my book, The Food Codes; Intuitive Eating for Every Body.

Vi and Bob’s Story

My husband retired from a very busy law practice at age seventy. I thought we would be having more fun after he retired, but Bob was too tired to do much. Every morning Bob would eat his usual cereal and toast piled with jam for breakfast, get up from the table, and have to go lie back down for an hour or two. He would have to nap after lunch, also. Bob’s doctor said he just needed to lose weight due to his high blood pressure and constant fatigue.

I had had some health problems several years ago and Lana really helped me get healthy. I loved the food plan she gave me as part of my treatment program. I found out that many of the foods I ate all the time were causing me problems. When I started eating the food on my plan, I had a lot more energy and no more digestive problems.

Bob supports me in my natural healing and health ideas, but he eats as he pleases. He loves bread, cheese, and ice cream.

When he finally agreed to have a food plan tested, guess what foods were causing him to be so tired? You guessed it: bread, cheese, and ice cream. The yeast in bread was bothering him and so were dairy products.

Through testing Bob’s Food Codes, we found some alternatives to dairy products and natural yeast bread that tested good for Bob. He replaced dairy with coconut milk and almond milk. He loves coconut-milk ice cream even more than he loved dairy ice cream and has a small bowl now and then.

We found that sourdough bread was a good food for Bob. Lana brought us a loaf of her homemade sourdough bread and Bob was in heaven. He stopped eating cheese for several weeks, and in testing a new food plan later we found that he can now eat a certain kind of cheese with no problems. Using the Food Codes plan has made Bob much more aware of his food choices and it has helped me to know what to cook for us both.

Bob lost his tiredness, and he lost fifteen pounds when he started eating the foods that are good for him, and he gained his energy back. We are going on a long-dreamed-about trip and we will be gone for several months. I am glad to have a husband who has energy to travel and have fun with.

Track Your Foods

Food can be such a pleasurable experience. We really love to eat. You might not have thought of food as a stressor before, but here is some food for thought: The last two decades have produced a large amount of research that linked stress to obesity and diseases such as diabetes, autoimmune diseases, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, and many other conditions and diseases. Increased fat-storing, abdominal obesity , low metabolism, high blood sugar, and hormone problems are all linked to stress. To understand how to be slim and trim or how to heal and be well, it is important to first understand the body and the stress process that wears the body down.

To gain more insights into the correlation between your stress and food, keep a food journal. For one week track what you eat. Make a note of what you’re feeling when you put food in your mouth. Note what types of foods you are taking comfort in. Evaluate how the various foods make you feel before, during and after you consume them.

Within a week, you are likely to be very surprised at what you discover. Likely you will find that you eat even when you are not hungry. Actually, most often people eat when they are stressed rather than hungry.

Once you determine your triggers, you can do something about them.