Once you reach the age of 30, your lifestyle may be having a more significant impact on your weight than you realise. We all know the apparent causes of weight gain, such eating too much and not exercising enough, but there are also some covert variables that can have a significant impact. Here are some of the most popular ones to stay away from in order to maintain a healthy weight range and a healthier body.
1. Stress
Having trouble managing your stress levels? It’s probably affecting your weight, especially if you’re a woman. During stressful times, your body releases the stress hormone cortisol, which can cause your blood sugar levels to soar out of control. Studies show that having a high cortisol level makes you crave sweet foods and makes you more likely to consume kilojoules (calories).
Additionally, cortisol alters how your body uses glucose and making it more difficult to burn fat and simpler to retain fat. Although men and women both have the potential to accumulate belly fat, women are more likely to do so. You want to maintain your belly fat to a minimal because it has been related to health problems.
2. Developing Emotional Eating Patterns
If you don’t take care of your health, you might eat based on your feelings rather than because you’re actually hungry. When you’re depressed, anxious, lonely, bored, or dissatisfied, you may crave certain foods (often unhealthy) and turn to eating to fill that emotional emptiness.
In the moment, you might feel a little bit better, but over time, emotional eating can have a significant impact on your weight. The majority of the time, you won’t receive a cue that you’re full, and it’s all too simple to discover that you’ve had much more food than you intended in a short period of time. Additionally, you’re not going to feel any better afterwards. In fact, you can feel even worse because emotional eating frequently leaves you feeling guilty and ashamed of your dietary choices.
3. Sleeplessness
You’re more prone to consume more calories and put on weight when you have poor quality sleep. This is because it interferes with the hormones that regulate hunger. It is more difficult to control your hunger when you are sleep deprived since it causes ghrelin production to increase and leptin levels to drop.
As your levels of these hormones will be much more evenly distributed, getting enough sleep is one of the underappreciated strategies to manage your weight.
4. Difficulty Building Muscle Mass
If you don’t exercise much and spend a lot of time sitting down, you generally don’t have a significant amount of muscle mass. Although it might not seem important, this is a frequent cause of weight gain.
Your metabolism is boosted by lean muscle, which slightly eases the process of burning calories. Your metabolism does not benefit from having a lot of lean muscle, making it more difficult to burn calories.
Strength training is one of the finest strategies to gain additional muscle mass. You won’t turn out looking like a bodybuilder, so don’t worry! Instead of the bulky appearance we frequently associate with weights, the goal of strength training is to develop a body that is toned with little body fat.
5. Eating Insufficiently
Most of the time, being on a diet assures you that you will lose weight, right? Overly limiting your calorie intake slows down your metabolism and triggers “starvation mode,” which enables the body to function on less calories. Because your body consumes the majority of the calories you consume to survive, this also means you burn fewer calories.
Long-term adherence to this type of diet is exceedingly challenging. You’ll probably return to a less restricting eating plan, but your body may still be more prone to storing fat. This is the reason why many people discover they put on weight after quitting a low-calorie diet.
6. Eating “Low Fat” Foods
It’s not necessarily true that food that advertises itself as “low fat” will keep you in shape. Many foods that advertise themselves as “reduced fat” really contain a lot of calories and are typically loaded with sugar and salt to make them taste better. If you consume too many of these “low fat” items, you’ll undoubtedly gain weight.
How to Prevent These Triggers
What can you do to prevent these typical triggers and maintain the healthiest possible health then?
- Avoid “low fat” meals that can cause weight gain and have a healthy, balanced diet that doesn’t restrict your calorie intake.
- Exercise regularly to help your body add a little more muscular mass.
- Sleep a lot to keep your appetite hormones in check.
- Find healthier strategies to manage your emotions that don’t include emotional eating and make stress reduction a significant component of your self-care regimen.
- Implementing a more conscious eating strategy to prevent eating impulsively.
