The stress / weight-gain connection - and the solution.
Dear Friend,
Let’s take a deeper look at what stress really is and how exactly it’s affecting our health - and just what we can do about it. Stress is commonly associated with keeping up with life’s demands. Short-term pressures and stress are normal and can even help influence us in positive ways, but having an ongoing feeling of stress ('chronic stress') is a major culprit of undesired weight gain!
The Domino Effect
When faced with stressful circumstances, the body instinctively produces more stress hormones, including adrenaline and cortisol. These are the hormones released during the commonly known 'fight-or-flight response', like for example if chased by a tiger (knock on wood). But these hormones can also slowly secrete in the body from any kind of subtle stress like anger, fear of the outside world, and even when we just have more to worry about.
Now here’s the problem - with stress comes a stronger craving for sugar. Why? Sugar is what most rapidly converts to glucose, and glucose is what the body needs coupled with the adrenaline, which gives you the burst of energy to run for your life, if and when needed (hooray for no saber-toothed tigers). When your body is feeling that familiar craving of glucose, foods with processed sugar can be hard to resist - especially if you have them in your house. The good news is fruits convert to glucose very fast too. But when it comes to processed sugar, once you get that cycle going it creates a biochemical sugar addiction due to sugar being the quickest to convert to glucose.
Now the problem is this - you’re getting more of the quick converting fuel which now your body stores as fat in order to be burned as fuel later. Although the weight gain is significant, it is actually the least of my concerns because the bigger problem in this sugar cycle is your immune system becomes weaker which of course is a higher-than-ever priority. The root of the cause (and we've talked about it before) is processed sugar causes inflammation. When we think of inflammation we think of it as when we strain a muscle, but inflammation can also be caused by the foods we eat. This is an inflammation throughout the body which reduces blood flow, and in turn our bodies are less able to circulate oxygen-nutrient rich blood. As a result, everything becomes weaker, including the immune system. Thankfully, there is a way though to break free from this sugar cycle!
The Solution To Stopping The Cycle
As always, first and foremost, you gotta clear the riff-raff out of your pantry! Have you done this within the last couple months? Sugar can be sneaky and may just find a way into your panty. Sugar hides in everything like baked snack foods, sauces, salad dressings, ketchup, and bottled drinks. Time to clear your pantry of junk foods and get them out of your house! It's a rewarding discipline because then these foods will not be there as an option in the first place. The idea of course is to provide yourself the superior options like fruit which thankfully only has benefits. Now of course the other part of mitigating stress is to incorporate life-enriching activities that make you happy.
What are some basics?
1. Regular exercise BOTH gets your body strong and 'exorcises' stored adrenaline and cortisol.
2. Regular sunshine produces serotonin for the brain; plus you get your vitamin D. Score.
3. Spend time with people that make you happy - people that you admire, and people that admire you too. Need I mention the benefit of laughter? The 'Laws of oxytocin' work, plain and simple. Although social time has been limited during the pandemic, there are creative ways around it such as FaceTime, Zoom, and similar video communication. Sure, in person interaction is always more warm and personable - but a live-smile from a friend, even on a screen, goes a long way. Conversely, my advice is to reduce your time on social media platforms. It's not exactly breaking news that social media can have the opposite effect.
4. Good sleep, for a whole host of reasons.
5. And healthy diet, healthy diet, healthy diet!!
....As you probably know, Subscriber, these are all topics I cover extensively in my book, Infinity Health Manual. If you haven't read it yet, then please do since I can promise you you will be doing something extraordinarily good for yourself, in many ways.
In my upcoming article I'm excited to share with you some more of the how-to's to kick in your body's 'internal pharmacy' making your immune system far more resilient to virtually any disease - the lesser-known's that are incredibly effective relative to the effort they take.
Since 2001, the therapeutic power of the Infinity products has greatly enhanced the health of many thousands of people, and now more than ever, they are meeting a very important need. If you've had the opportunity to experience the guaranteed results when using these products on a consistent basis then share them with friends and family since naturally they will receive the same invaluable benefits that you have. And question - who do you know that would do well to read this information today?
Yours (very!) truly, and wishing you excellent health always,
Billy