For a lot of us, one-liner definition of stress is    “when you wake up screaming and realize you haven’t fallen asleep yet.”

Most of you have answered the option “NO, it does not make me fat’’ And when the majority of you are with 1 option, democratically this option is right because it’s got the maximum votes but I am a Doctor and I have to tell you the truth,  BUT hay don’t worry, you were right when you chose that option and the right answer is No, it does not  AND Yes, it does, is also not wrong, Actually it Depends on person and the situation.  Richa from Delhi and Rupan from Mohali are 2 NidSuners who have given completely right answer and rest of you have given Half right answer, here is how?

I’ll recommend you read the whole blog first and then reconsider your valuable opinions with the new enriched knowledge that makes you the NidSuners, smarter than others!

Food for your Mind:       To simplify this complicated affair of Stress & fat, I am dividing stress in 2 types:

• Acute short term stress examples are examination time, first few days of severe injury and illness, giving public speech for the first time, death of loved one, divorce hearing, first day of breakup!       And then is
• Chronic stress examples are every day stress of city life, time pressure, job pressure, family pressure, relationship pressure, business pressure etc. basically chronic pressures are never ending

In acute stress, it’s very common for people to lose weight. This type of Stress can easily reduce your appetite for a short term.  You might have noticed, for people under severe stress to lose up to 5 kilos in a week or 2 is no big deal like in illness!. Acute Stress can increase metabolic rate “as you might have observed in you exams if you remember those dreadful days”. Remember the day When you were going to examination hall , Your heart was pounding as if it would burst out of your cavity, you were so impatient and incredibly nervous.

Acute stress also makes the food that you eat; move faster in your intestine thus less food is absorbed.   So under these circumstances of acute stress “NO, stress doesn’t make me fat” is the right answer.

However, long term stress can make you fat!!

Long stress of everyday life or after few days of acute stress if prolonged, releases a hormone called cortisol released in your circulation by adrenal glands. Cortisol increases fat storage in your stomach region because in deeper parts of your abdominal area, there are maximum number of cortisol receiving gates what we call “cortisol receptors” in medical language. So you can say that cortisol is concentrated around your tummy more than any other region of body. One of the key functions of Cortisol is to increases blood sugar in your body which is converted into fats for later use, the reason for extra layer of tummy fat in stressful situations. The other reason for a lot of people to gain weight in stress is that they eat comfort food to reduce it. A lot of times when something is not going the way we want to, opening a packet of chips or chocolate or few shots at local pub to distress makes a lot of sense ….so Yes Stress can make you fat  is also true                       Basically  “ it DEPENDS “ is just a bit more appropriate answer.

See I told you that being a NidSuner you are becoming smarter day by day )