Keto Stress and Weight Gain
Keto Stress and Weight Gain often interact with each other. You probably are going to have to address stress at one time or another.
When you react to stress, you create a hormone called cortisol. The stress could be hearing bad news, or coming around a corner and a huge snarling dog is there to startle you. It can be caused by all kinds of events in daily life, large and small.
When you go into stress, your brain sends a signal to your adrenal glands. It tells the body to prepare for the event by producing cortisol and adrenaline.
Ancient Hormones
These are the hormones that are associated with fight or flight response. In the part of the brain where this all occurs, you become primal. The built in desire to survive gives you two choices. Stand and fight, or run away.
Part of the process of putting our body on alert, is that the body will produce loads of glucose. Glucose is flooded into the system so your muscles will have the energy they need to fight or run.
The second part of the process is to inhibit the production of insulin. That’s because the insulin would take the sugar out of the blood.
So now you have the Keto Dieters nightmare. Lots of sugar in the blood with no insulin to take it away. You’ve spent a lot of time and effort to get into ketosis, and then a momentary stress event can knock you out. Wow.
Cortisol narrows the arteries, and with the adrenaline it increases the heart rate. That raises your blood pressure which pushes the glucose to your tissues really fast.
Keto stress and weight gain can be tightly intertwined.
Modern Stress
Modern stress is not the same as the ancient stress of running into wild animals. Now it’s work related, social media, school, relationships, financial or slow traffic. It’s everywhere.
Stress hormones are supposed to raise up only when needed, then go down. But our modern lives provide constant stressors. Staying in stress all the time causes the body to change over time, and not in a good way.
What To Do?
What do I do about it? My recommendation is to change your normal, even if it’s for only a few minutes a day. Why? If you are in a pattern you have to break the pattern.
First, think if there are any stressors in your life you don’t really need. Any activities you think you must do, but not really. Any stressful people you can have less interaction with.
Then, you change your relationship with yourself, even if only a slight bit.
One very successful way for some people is the work/break pattern. Actually set a timer. Work 50 minutes, then take 10 minutes to do nothing much. Leave the work and putter around, or do some deep knee bends, or stretches. Or even pull weeds in the garden.
Get In the Habit
Get in the habit of being able to leave the stressful activity at will, then come back to it. This keeps you from being completely in a rut of stress. Sometimes that’s all you need.
On the other hand, if you are not active with work, you can sit around and think too much. Then you can drive yourself into stress with negative thoughts. Change something. Maybe reverse the plan, and do chores for 10 minutes every hour, then hang out for 50 minutes.
There is a way to deal with Keto stress and weight gain. Like the keto diet itself, you will have to take positive action to make a change.
You can do this. Keep it simple, but make a change. Don’t ever get down on yourself. You are exactly as you were meant to be. Just calmly go about improving the areas of your life that you think need it. Relax and Keto On.
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Act! Don’t React!
Have a Happy, Healthy Day
Livtar
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