Is Your Stress Making You Lose Weight or Gain Weight?! (The science of stress on weight)
Hey everyone, welcome to Abbey’s Kitchen! Today, we’re diving into stress, eating habits, weight gain, weight loss, and cortisol—everything you need to know about how stress impacts your body.
Whether you overeat, lose your appetite, gain weight, or drop pounds, this episode breaks down the science behind it all. With holiday stress at an all-time high, now’s the perfect time to figure it out. Comment 💬 and subscribe 🔔 for more nutrition and wellness tips!
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My body seems to take any chance it can get to gain more weight lol! But to answer your question, I don’t think it’s so much that I eat more when I’m stressed, it’s just that I have a harder time making healthy choices because an apple just doesn’t hold a candle to a cookie when I’m tired and hungry and stressed, and I’m also less likely to be able to tolerate being hungry (And it doesn’t seem to matter what I eat or how much I exercise The only way I’ve ever been able to lose weight is to be hungry most of the time).
I’m the same! Sometimes I try to just eat the healthy food as well as the treat and not deny myself the treat! So you could have an apple and a cookie!
Thank you for sharing, I hope this video id useful!!
I needed this videos after my last month of exams plus my job, I was really stressed and eating a lot, love you sm
I’m so glad that this video can help you through exam stress!
Definitely depends on the type of stress. More run of the mill stress (job stress) will cause me to eat more, but more serious events (like a family member in hospital) will cause me to eat much less.
Yep there really are so many different determining factors
I agree, same for me.
This! Day to day stress (bad day at work, caught a cold, found someone annoying, got a bad parking spot, got home late, forgot to get something whilst buying groceries etc) makes me eat more cause I’m like “that sucked, I’m gonna get McDonald’s to make me feel better & cause I don’t feel like making food”.
But big stress, like a family or pet passing, losing a job, moving, not being able to pay a bill, etc, stuff like that I have little to no appetite at all.
I’ve DEFINITELY gained weight from stress. Mostly because I feel like I need to eat my feelings all the time. I work in theater as a costumer/makeup artist so I’m pretty much working 3 jobs right now with the holidays. I have my full time M-F job at a costume shop, I’m doing side gigs on weekends doing makeup for the Grinch, and I am also costume designing a group I work with every year. So yeah I’m very stressed. Not to mention I just got married and planning a wedding is one of the most stressful things I have experienced and continue to experience with the post wedding blues
Changes in appetite due to stress for me personally varies depending on how long and how intense the stress is. If it’s a short period of stress (a day) I tend to eat more high sugar and high carb foods. If it’s for a longer period of stress (a week or more) I will have trouble eating anything at all.
When my fiancé passed away I lost a frightening amount of weight due to the extreme stress and depression. I don’t want to give away numbers as it might be triggering, but it got to a point that I had nothing that fit, I could barely lift anything, or do any heavy duty tasks, and it took over a year to gain the weight back.
Now I’m back at a stressed time in my life, having catatonic phases (not moving whatsoever), drinking a liquid diet of Ensure, but gaining weight? I want to blame aging (recently turned 40) as well as the catatonia that comes and goes. I’m not overweight by any means, but I’m not happy with my appearance or how I feel. I don’t know what to do anymore. Sorry, just venting. Sick of being sick.
I can’t eat when I’m stressed. But my weight stays the same or even goes up slightly
Lose weight and lose appetite 100%, even when I make sure to eat 3 meals + dessert and snacks I lose weight.
Same. Needed this video today as I haven’t been able to eat today because of stress.
Lose everything!!! Especially appetite and weight
Love Love Love your content, but, even though understanding that this is part of it all: please, limit the commercial.
I typically eat less but gain weight and have loads of GI issues and insomnia ! My third year of college (2017-2018) was my hardest year class load wise as well as being the first time I was financially supporting myself, living outside my parents house, working 2 jobs and in the home stretch of planning my wedding. I gained 30 pounds in a year and had lots of bloating and diarrhea, insomnia and hair loss. Fall of 2018 I got married, had less classes that were more enjoyable, got promoted at one job and quit the other one. Within a few months I lost almost all of the weight I gained and all my GI issues and insomnia went away. My hair unfortunately never fully recovered
I have a bit of a split depending on stress level. If I’m sort of stressed like I’m frazzled but I can still sort of keep my sanity, I’ll eat more. If I’m deeply stressed and struggling to keep it together or I’m reaching the point of shutting down I’ll lose my appetite
I stress eat, I lost a family member recently and almost lost another one, I was running on stress. So it’s gain. I just learned my body hates it though (I ate like that in earlier years on a daily basis) which is good at a certain point as I know I will go back to eat normal once we are through with everything
I went through a terrifying event lately: My roommate and best friend woke me up at 6a.m on a exam morning bcs she had cut open her wrists in a suicide attempt. I had to deal with everything, from calling an ambulance to cleaning the blood that was everywhere in our apartment. This left me traumatized, and I had terrible head aches and nausea for more than a week, and I lost my appetite. It was scary to lose my appetite bcs I am in anorexia recovery, and I can’t allow myself to fall back into restrictive patterns. Definitely a scary and stressful time 😬
I‘m so so so sorry this happened to you. It must have been really traumatic. I hope your roommate is (physically, at least) doing fine and that their mental state will improve with time. Please seek help or a loved one to speak through this experience if you can. A stranger on the internet is very proud of you for helping a person in need ❤️
But now it’s time to think about yourself again. Don’t let yourself get back to harmful habits, you don’t deserve that. Take care of yourself, please
@ Thank you so much, that truly means a lot to me. ♥️My close ones and my psychologist are telling me to step back from our friendship since it’s not the first time that she has harmed herself, and it truly impacts my mental health, and I don’t feel at ease with her anymore. It shatters my heart because she is a close friend and we have had a lot of good times, but idk if I can bear anymore stress of that kind. I will try to take care of myself, but I am scared to be a bad person if I decide to focus on myself and « leave » her 😞
I eat way less and drop weight very easily when I’m extra stressed. Being in constant fight/flight really makes eating very difficult and unappealing. I also get hypermetabolic, which makes me lose weight even faster.
it is wild. I stress eat and I have a chronic anxiety disorder, that results in me struggling with loosing weight. During the pandemic I was so relaxed and rested (I had more than 8 hrs of sleep every night) I lost A LOT of weight very quickly and felt GREAT 😂
When I’m a little stressed, I tend to eat more. When I’m a lot stressed, I lose my appetite. That’s how I know things have become serious – I stop being able to eat.
I think that when stressed I eat more in the form of emotional eating. I guess I could say I have chronic stress, because I used to be in a highly toxic relationship for years, and now I am doing a PhD, where you have people criticising you non-stop. I do exercise 5-6 times a week, and now I have started to practice mindfulness and meditation, and I think it does help. I am now at my pretty much normal weight, my BMI is in the normal range, but I am really upset about my belly which is very protruding and disproportionate. I try to diet to lose 2-3 more kilos, but it’s not going very well and my cheat days are intense.
The research aligns really well with what I have experienced. When I was younger and lighter, I definitely would lose my appetite. Now, if anything, I gain a little. I have stopped dieting in recent years and I think it is helped me stay pretty consistent, but sometimes there are still those sugary food cravings- just not as bad as they were a few years ago.
And for stress tips- meditation! I know it sounds hokey but there is actual scientific backing to the stress reduction from regular meditation practices, even short ones!