PEERtrainer Health

This is a segment of the PEERtrainer Complete Guide To Weight Loss Resistance

Sleeping less than seven hours a night or constantly awakening throughout the night can lead to more than just feeling spacey and requiring a caffeine IV to get you through the next morning. You also knock your fat-burning hormones out of whack and set the scene for weight loss resistance.

Too little sleep, for instance, elevates your insulin levels. Insulin is a storage hormone: it stores fat very well. A study in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism found that even healthy people who got too little sleep for even one night increased your risk for insulin resistance.

Other studies show just one terrible night's sleep increases levels of your stress hormone cortisol and your hunger hormone ghrelin the next day. Translation: you're more stressed out and hungrier. You can predict how that scenario will play out!

But wait, there's more. Not getting enough sleep can make you leptin resistant. Leptin tells your brain to stop eating, but when your brain cells become leptin resistant, they stop "hearing" that hormone. You're more apt to get seconds at the buffet even if you're not hungry.

Related PEERtrainer Article: How To Sleep Better Naturally

This is a segment of a larger guide to weight loss resistance.

Stress makes you weight loss resistant on several fronts, and numerous studies confirm its affect on fat gain.

For instance, one study in the American Journal of Epidemiology looked at 1,355 men and women over nine years.

Researchers found that both genders had higher body mass index (BMI) levels if they worked super-stressful jobs as well as had other demands that increased stress. (BMI scores can determine whether you are overweight or obese.) "Interventions to address psychosocial stress may limit weight gain among overweight and obese men and women," they concluded.

On a more practical level, stress makes you head straight for the Krispy Kremes or whatever your favorite comfort food might be. After all, you're not exactly gravitating to quinoa and Brussels sprouts after your boss lets you have it for not meeting third-quarter quota.

Your adrenals respond to stress by secreting cortisol. This hormone gets a bad rap, but cortisol can actually be beneficial in certain situations. For instance, if you're working out, cortisol helps redistribute fat from your fat cells to your muscle cells, which need that energy to work (that's one reason cortisol increases during exercise).

But responding to chronic stress by continually secreting cortisol eventually wears your adrenals out. Adrenal burnout manifests as sleeping poorly, insulin resistance, decreased thyroid function, and lowered nutrient status. All of these symptoms contribute to weight loss resistance.

Strategies to address adrenal fatigue: Learn to manage stress levels through yoga, deep breathing, or simply staying in the present. Your adrenals store more vitamin C than any other organ, and stress depletes this crucial vitamin. Eat vitamin C-rich foods and take a supplement. 

Adrenal Fatigue is one of 7 key contributors to weight loss resistance

Read the complete guide here.

This is a segment from: What Is Adrenal Fatigue

What Are Your Adrenal Glands And Why Are They Important?

Your adrenal glands are two triangular-shaped glands that sit on top of your kidneys. Each gland has a medulla surrounded by a cortex, which together produce hormones such as estrogen, progesterone, steroids, and cortisol, along with chemicals such as adrenaline.

They're slightly larger than a grape but don't let their small size fool you!

Hormones and chemicals from the adrenals are secreted in response to messages coming from your brain. The main role of the adrenal glands is to help your body successfully manage stressful situations.

For example, let's say a car is coming towards you. Your brains determines that this is a stressful situation so in response it sends a signal to your adrenal glands to release adrenaline and cortisol, which increases your blood pressure, respiration, heart rate, and blood glucose levels, allowing more blood and oxygen to flow through your body to immediately get you out of harm's way.

Why Do Adrenals Get Stressed So Easily?

The adrenals are easily stressed because of the cumulative effect of the many types of stressors we experience daily as well as our unique responses to the stress we have.

If the hypothalamus is constantly sending messages to the adrenals that the body is in a stressful situation (whether physically, mentally, or emotionally), the adrenals will continuously secrete adrenaline and cortisol in an effort to get your body prepared to "save you" from potential harm.

Read The Full Article: What Is Adrenal Fatigue