Viva U.S. News & World Report

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 what you eat, the more weight you may gain (or the less weight you lose). . . .Studies show, for example, that women who report preoccupation with weight and dietary restraint--i.e., trying to limit how much they eat in order to lose or maintain weight--are more likely to gain weight than lose it."

"It also has to do with how your mind influences your body." As Julie Pike comments in the article, "Thoughts generate emotions, and all emotions are physiologic responses to an interpretation" In other words, as Miller writes, "When long-term eating obsessions, food fears or weight worries cause chronic stress, they can set you up for the very thing you're spending so much energy trying to avoid: weight gain."

Today's Words of Wisdom: "There's no bodily event that goes unregistered in the mind, and no mental occurrence that doesn't affect your body in some way. The healthier you become, the more unified the mind and body get to be--until finally they form a single entity, the body mind of the whole person." Don Miller, Bodymind

#weightloss #stress #stressresponse #weightgain #healthyeating #serotonin