We all know what makes us fat: eating more in calories than we burn off in energy. But though this is true, it doesn’t answer the more interesting question – why do we overeat in the first place?
Robina 7 day doctors and acupuncture recommend the following video on the connection between stress and weight gain:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p05vt8nr
Why do I sometimes feel compelled to eat that bit of cake or bar of chocolate although I know I am going to regret it a few minutes later?
Is it just greed – or is something else going on?
Although self-control is important, there is mounting evidence that stress plays a significant part in weight gain.
Chronic stress disrupts our sleep and our blood sugar levels. This leads to increased hunger and comfort eating.
And that then leads to further disrupted sleep, even higher levels of stress and even more disrupted blood sugars. In time, this can lead not only to unhealthy levels of body fat, but also to type-2 diabetes.
To see what can happen, Dr Giles Yeo, a member of the Trust Me, I’m a Doctor team, decided, with the help of scientists from Leeds University, to put himself through a particularly stressful day.
They put him in front of a computer and made him rapidly subtract a number, 17, from another number, 2,043. He kept making mistakes, which for someone like Giles is particularly stressful.
Then they got him to put his hand in a bath of ice-cold water and hold it there. Before and after these tests, the Leeds team measured Giles’s blood sugar levels.
Please see the video for the test results.
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