Is Cortisol Derailing Your Weight Loss Goals?

Cortisol plays a crucial role in our body. It’s a hormone produce by the adrenals and it’s most well known for it’s association with stress. When we perceive stress, the adrenals release cortisol, which in turn, floods our system with additional glucose. This glucose helps provide us with extra energy.

This is an excellent response by our body if we’re faced with a dangerous situation. It gives us the boost in energy to flee to safety. However, what happens if we don’t use this energy? Say, there’s nothing to run from? We’re sitting in traffic feeling stressed out? Well, then we need to eventually clear out that extra glucose utilizing another hormone called Insulin.

What happens if we keep going on this merry go round? We keep getting stressed out and we keep calling on both cortisol and insulin? Over time, this results in chronically elevated cortisol thus leading to elevated insulin. This, unfortunately, eventually leads to unwanted weight gain(2).

The other issue is, it’s not just the kind of stress you think of, that’s driving cortisol. There are other types of stress that are contributing and creating a compounding problem. What else drives cortisol you ask?

• Over-exercising(1)

• Too much caffeine(1)

• Blood sugar imbalances(1)

• Not getting enough sleep(2)

Cortisol plays a very important role, but we want to keep it in check and utilize it only when necessary. If you’re struggling to lose weight, consider how stress, all forms of stress, including the ones above, may be contributing.

Photo: Markus Winkler/Unsplash

References

(1) Ballentyne, S., PhD (2017). Paleo Principles. Canada: Victory Belt

(2) Fung, Jason, MD (2016). The Obesity Code. Canada: Greystone