How Stress Can Lead to Weight Gain, and How to Fight It

Stress is a natural reaction to life’s challenges and an important survival mechanism. But if you don’t have a toolkit of healthy ways to manage stress, or if your stress becomes chronic (long-term), it can lead to unwanted changes in your body. Weight gain can be one of these for various reasons.

“There are several ways stress can lead to weight gain,” says Ariana M. Chao, PhD, RN, an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing in Philadelphia. “People may eat as a way to cope with stress and as a way to make themselves feel better.” Prolonged, chronic stress can also lead to hormonal changes that may increase your appetite and cause cravings for higher-calorie comfort foods.

But if you’re managing your weight, you can help to regain control over the effects of stress. Here’s why stress can hit the scales – and what to do about it.

Stress can contribute to weight gain by changing your appetite as well as how your body uses energy. However, whether stress is short-term (acute) or long-term (chronic) can make a significant difference.

Chronic stress has an almost diabolical effect on the metabolism. “Chronic stress may influence our brain’s reward system in areas such as the amygdala and hippocampus, which may promote food cravings,” says Dr. Chao.

Studies in mice have also found that hormones released in response to chronic stress can prompt the loss of skeletal muscle, although more research is needed to confidently apply these findings to humans. “Muscle tissue is the largest calorie burner in the body, so overall metabolism drops if you lose muscle tissue,” Dr. Talbott says.

By contrast, acute stress, which is short-duration, tends to make people lose their appetite as the brain directs resources away from normal body functions, such as eating, to the organ systems needed to survive an immediate challenge. But acute stress may lead to weight gain in some people through another mechanism: Contributing to overeating.

“We believe that stress adds to the need for reward, and a person needs more food to get the same reward” during a stressful situation, says Femke Rutters, PhD, an associate professor at VU University Medical Center in Amsterdam who specializes in diabetes and hypertensive diseases. “Overweight people are more often those with high restraint and high disinhibition.” In other words, she explains, being overweight may mean you usually tend to restrain calorie intake but cave in stressful situations or when unexpectedly presented with food.

Taking care of your sleep hygiene and getting enough exercise can help you manage stress.

Good Sleep Hygiene

Hormones, sleep deprivation, stress, and eating habits have many possible connections. “Stress and sleep can interact in a cyclical manner,” says Chao. “High stress has negative effects on sleep quality and duration, and poor sleep can negatively affect stress levels. Sleep deprivation is often thought of as a chronic stressor that can contribute to stress dysregulation and hyperactivation of the stress systems, including higher cortisol levels.”

Exercise

But the benefits of moving regularly don’t end there. “Exercise can have direct effects on weight by helping burn calories and increasing lean muscle mass, which helps with weight control,” says Chao. “Regular exercise can also help improve your physiological toughness when facing stress. It can lead to beneficial adaptations in the stress response system that improve how your body reacts to future physiological stressors, which may result in the body being more efficient at coping with psychological stressors.”

Exercising regularly can also help you recover more quickly from stressors and reduce negative feelings afterward. “This lessens the overall wear and tear that the stressors have on the body,” says Chao.

Plus, regular physical activity can stimulate the production of endorphins. These are brain chemicals that can elevate mood and produce feelings of relaxation, explains Chao.

“Cortisol is one of the main hormones involved in stress responses and prepares you for fight or flight,” says Chao. “It can increase your appetite and trigger cravings for high-calorie comfort foods. Stress hormones can also impact your metabolism and promote fat storage, particularly around the abdomen.” Higher cortisol levels resulting from insufficient sleep can also influence brain areas that may enhance the impact of stress, says Chao.

“Too many people tend to view stress as something that they just have to deal with,” says Talbott. “But they really need to think about managing stress as something that is as important as their diet or their exercise program.”

Here are some tips for breaking the chronic stress-weight gain feedback loop:

1. Set priorities.

“Make a record of how you spend your time each day for a week,” suggests Chao. “Decide which tasks and activities are most important to you and prioritize them.” Don’t forget to incorporate time for adequate sleep and exercise into your schedule. “Sleep and joyful physical movement are important parts of self-care,” says Alexis Conason, PsyD, a private-practice psychologist in New York City who counsels her patients on body image and acceptance, as well as mindful eating.

Sleep lays the foundation for mental well-being — when you feel well rested, you’re more likely to have more resilience and be better able to handle the changes that are bound to come up in your life. “In contrast, when you don’t get enough sleep, every little obstacle that comes up in your day-to-day life feels more difficult to cope with,” says Dr. Conason.

2. Become efficient.

“Streamline healthy eating and physical activity to make them easier to fit into a busy lifestyle,” says Chao. Chop vegetables for the week to eat as snacks or to add to stir-fries or salads, and prepack several days' lunches over the weekend. Keep a set of exercise clothes and shoes at the office so working out after you wrap up at your desk becomes a no-brainer.

3. Love your body.

“Poor body image, internalized weight bias, and body shame are major sources of stress,” says Conason. “Research suggests that internalized weight bias increases stress, as well as contributes to other poor medical and mental health outcomes.”

Improve your body image by focusing on being healthy. When eating, for example, fill half your plate with fruits and vegetables, take walks several times a week, and begin other healthful habits, rather than putting all your mental energy into the number on the scale.

“Mindfulness meditation is a great tool to decrease stress and improve our capacity for self-acceptance and self-compassion, which have been shown to reduce body image dissatisfaction, body shame, and associated stress,” says Conason. Mindfulness meditation is the practice of being fully aware and present in the moment, with a nonjudgmental sense of acceptance, explains Conason.

4. Recognize what you can appreciate in your life.

At the same time that you acknowledge whatever is stressing you out, recognize what you can appreciate in life.

“As simplistic as it sounds, the fact that you can look to what is improving in a given situation can help to psychologically buffer the stress in other areas of your life,” says Talbott.

5. Think before you snack.

Try to stop eating before mealtimes, and consider whether you are actually hungry or reaching for food for another reason.

“Food is not the best match for the emotional need of stress,” says Conason. “It may alleviate stress for a moment, but the stress will almost always return. It’s important to find a way to more authentically meet our emotional needs.”

Conason recommends focusing on noticing when you’re eating in response to stress rather than physiological hunger. “From there, you can think about how to best care for your needs, whether that is with food or another coping mechanism, such as a stress-reduction or relaxation technique,” she says.

6. Take a walk.

• Chronic stress triggers hormonal changes, such as increased cortisol, which can boost your appetite, promote belly fat storage, and cause cravings for high-calorie comfort foods.
• Getting seven or more hours of sleep per night and engaging in regular exercise can help lower stress levels, improve metabolic health, and reduce the urge to overeat.
• Practicing mindfulness meditation and checking in with your actual hunger levels before snacking can help you short-circuit the stress-weight gain cycle.
• Speak to a healthcare professional or licensed talk therapist if you’re finding your stress levels difficult to manage.