On March 26, U.S. News & World Report published an article, written by Anna Medaris Miller, titled "Is Food Stress Making You Fat?" It was a well-researched piece which quoted not only me but also Julie L. Pike, a psychologist in Durham, North Carolina, and Dr. Tiffany Lowe-Payne, an obesity specialist also located in North Carolina. The article's main points are that stress is actually counterproductive to efforts to lose weight. As Miller writes, "The more you worry about

My article "Can Anxiety Make You Fat?", which was posted on Beliefnet.com and Zestnow.com, answered the question with a resounding "Yes." The major culprit here is cortisol, a hormone that is produced when the body is under stress. One of the things that cortisol does is "preferentially direct body fat to the abdominal region" (i.e., create belly fat), as Dallas and Melissa Hartwig state in their 2012 book It Starts with Food. But something even scarier is happening here:

Check out my article on anxiety, the unwelcome hormones it produces in the body, and how these (especially a hormone called cortisol) lead to fat formation. Find the article on Simply Woman, The Three Tomatoes, Alina Bradford, and Pittsburgh Better Times. #anxiety #mindfulness #addiction #hormones #cortisol #dopamine #stress #stressresponse #metabolicsyndrome #abdominalfat #narcotics #foodcravings