Helen Reeves, Fastingly Fit
Anxious? Have you ever been just going around your day and all of a sudden you feel like you can’t breathe? Have you ever had a feeling of dread and you don’t know why? Do you sometimes feel like you just don’t want to be around anyone? Me TOO!!
This is anxiety and you and I are not alone, over 40 million people struggle with this and it does effect gut health and metabolism. Mice studied in a lab that were genetically given an anxiety prone amygdala, the part of the brain that controls stress and our fight or flight mechanics, were generally more lean and did not gain weight as easily as their counterparts. Why is this? During high stress times the body releases more sugar in the blood in preparation for a fight or flight response that is triggered by the body releasing the cortisol hormone, cortisol is supposed to be high in the mornings to help you get moving but subsides during the day. The mice tend to run around, they don’t rest and they burn more calories.
So why do we as humans gain weight when we are stressed? The flip side of this is that over time as we release more and more insulin to help balance the sugar in our blood due to our cortisol levels being high. Our anxiety and stress cause our cortisol levels to stay high longer and we start having slower metabolism as a response to conserving energy our body feels
we will need later. This is why you can think back and say I use to eat this way all the time and now if I even look at a biscuit I gain weight. It actually has less to do with our age and more to do with the conditioning we have put our bodies in over time by having high stress and anxiety and releasing cortisol and not exercising along with eating highly processed foods. This slow metabolism encourages our bodies to store sugars and we gain weight over time. We also begin to see the effects of insulin
resistance, where our bodies are immune to the sugar and no amount of insulin will help it which leads to inflammation and Type 2 diabetes. Our gut reacts to this in several ways releasing hormones to make us hungry, hormones to make us full and this vicious cycle goes on and on until we do something to stop it.
What can we do to stop the cycle of too much sugar in our bloodstream and too much insulin to
counteract this? We have to start with what we eat. I don’t like to use the word “diet” because you will immediately say, “here we go, I can’t eat anything I like!” That thought is simply not true. You just have to take a different approach to what you eat. It is not hard, it is just an adjustment you have to make one thing at a time. The best way to start is to get your water intake to a higher level. If you already have your water in check, start adding more protein into your diet. Protein is not stored if you don’t use it it is excreted. Every cell in our body uses protein and everyone should eat at least 80 grams a day regardless of their age, weight or other conditions, unless your doctor has told you not to. Starting with these two things will get you on a road to health and reduce inflammation over time.
So start a healthy journey with those two things and work toward a better you!
Helen is a certified nutrition and fitness instructor and runs the program Fastingly Fit. Check the website
www.fastinglyfit.com and join in on the next class to get fit and healthy