Belly fat, the scourge of many. If you suffer from excess abdominal visceral and/or subcutaneous fat, there are a number of factors that you need to address. Chief among them is stress. Sure, nutrition is a big issue and if you haven’t already started to improve that by cutting sugar out of your diet, well then start.

But stress is possibly just as big an issue, and certainly more often ignored. Stress is something we all take for granted, “one of those things” that we all suffer with and get on with in most cases. Here we’ll look at stress in the context of weight loss, specifically belly fat.

What if you’re trying to lose weight or belly fat, and failing? You’ve tried fixing your diet, you’ve tried training harder but you just can’t shift it. Well instead of doing 100 sit-ups per day on the ab-shaper, consider the following:

• Stress leads to the release of cortisol, a steroid hormone produced by the adrenal gland.
• Chronic stress (probably more common amongst people than you may think) leads to prolonged and excessive secretion of cortisol. This is not good.

Cortisol then has the following effects on you:

• Increases visceral belly fat, which in turn increases fat accumulation and inflammation in the body…which in turn, you guessed it, increases body fat. A viscious circle.
• Cortisol makes you age faster by increasing the amount of oxidative substances or free radicals in the body (the opposite to antioxidants). This causes further inflammation in places like your brain and heart, both fairly important organs in fairness.
• Negative feedback loop…similar to insulin, in times of greater stress our bodies become less sensitive to cortisol so that it takes greater quantities to have the same effect that it was originally meant for (to increase blood sugar). Over time it becomes harder and harder to get back to normal state as cortisol stays elevated, and we end up with more belly fat for less stress.
• Cortisol inhibits thyroid function, slowing your metabolism and decreasing the number of calories you burn. Which increases your body fat if your diet is not clean. The area most susceptible to fat retention, especially for males, is the belly.
• For women, cortisol interferes with progesterone and estrogen receptors, bringing on the symptoms of PMS such as water retention, irritability, and cravings.

Print this out and place on a table, don't do it on your actual laptop screen. They can be expensive to fix.

Increased elevated cortisol levels is brought about by stress, so what can we do to fight it?

1. Obviously, anti-stress solutions such as breathing practices and meditation are beneficial. There are a few good meditation apps around, one being Headspace which guides you through a nice 10 min regular practice. As a former Yoga instructor, I learnt that to breathe deeply and slowly is a simple but really great practice to reduce stress. Don’t just read that and skip over it….actually put it into practice. It only takes seconds, literally!
2. Probiotics in some studies have been shown to help by reducing gastrointestinal problems.
3. Accupuncture has also been shown to aid in cortisol reduction, though I have never personally tried it. Might be worth a shot.
4. Avoid coffee in the aftermath of a workout and exclude it from post workout nutrition. Caffeine raises cortisol here, but is less detrimental at other times.
5. Drink organic green tea to shovel more fat into the furnace.

So to summarize, we tend to underestimate the effect stress has on our overall health and specifically weight gain around the belly. Start to deal with your own stress because as you can see it has some nasty consequences that shouldn’t be underestimated or ignored. If you can put some of the above points 1-4 into practice, you may not get a perfect six-pack, but you can go some way towards improving your appearance and overall health. Hakuna Matata.