How does emotional stress hinder weight loss? Unveiling the link between stress and obesity.

The Impact of Emotions on Weight Loss

You might not realize it, but a bulging belly, thick "elephant legs," and flabby "butterfly arms" are all closely related to your emotions. Emotional problems are an invisible, intangible "killer" that silently affects your weight loss efforts.
Modern people all experience emotional problems to some degree, stemming from the pressures of life, studies, work, social interactions, family conflicts, and even the pressure of weight loss itself. These pressures subtly affect many people's emotions.

The most direct impact of emotional problems on weight loss is that they lead to overeating. When faced with stress, most people choose to eat, especially high-sugar and high-fat foods, to stimulate the secretion of more dopamine, thereby relieving anxiety and releasing stress. At the same time, the excessive secretion of cortisol, a stress hormone, directly leads to weight gain. In the next section, I will focus on how cortisol makes us gain weight.

In fact, it's not just stress that affects emotions; poor environment, poor sleep quality, and malnutrition can all lead to emotional fluctuations, indirectly affecting the weight loss efforts of those trying to lose weight.

To achieve better weight loss results, you can't just focus on diet and exercise; emotions are equally important. A study published in Emotion in 2017 showed that people with good moods have relatively lower levels of inflammation. As you've learned in previous chapters, inflammation is a significant cause of a predisposition to weight gain. People who laugh frequently can reduce more stress. Every time you laugh heartily, you engage more than 400 muscles in your body, which also increases calorie expenditure to some extent.

Therefore, maintaining a good mood and positive emotions is undeniably beneficial for weight loss, and especially important is not letting weight loss itself become a source of stress.