Stress And Weight Gain - A Vicious Circle

More crap research. The misses just keep on coming.

Eating more food high in fat, salt and sugar, combined with reduced physical activity, has been highlighted by the World Health Organisation (WHO) as the key causes of obesity.

Wrong.

The only cause of obesity is eating more Calories than you burn.

A diet of 100% fat will not add a gram to your body as long as you eat fewer Calories than you burn.

Brynjar Foss and sports scientist Sindre M Dyrstad have focused attention on this issue with the article Stress in obesity: cause or consequence?* published in Medical Hypotheses.

The researchers review a number of studies, which show that weight gain and cortisol (the stress hormone) levels are noticeably higher in people who became fatter because of stress.

Wronger.

People do not become fatter because of stress.

People become fatter because of too many Calories.

Also, where is the proof that stress made them fatter?

At best, this is chicken or egg research and there is no proof here of which really came first.

Getting fatter can potentially trigger the stress response, which in turn encourages additional weight gain.

"When you go up in weight, your body also comes under stress. That probably has a self-reinforcing effect - so you get even fatter," Foss explains.

But dieting can also stimulate cortisol production, which in turn may trigger the stress response and thereby counter the weight loss.

"Should our hypothesis turn out to be correct, it would mean that you'll have to break this stress pattern if you want to halt the weight increase," says Foss.

No.

You just have to eat fewer Calories than you burn.

Period.