Okay, tell the truth. At some point in your life, you dove head-in to a pile of “comfort food” when you were really, really stressed out, right?
Of course. We’ve all done it. It might interest you to discover, then, that new research out of Ohio State University shows that the particular combination of stress and binging on so-called “comfort food” actually leads to a slower metabolism and more weight gain!
The extra calories in junk food are bad enough, but the slower metabolism alone- that is, not counting the extra binge calories at all- can lead to an extra 11 pounds over the course of a year.
Add that on to the actual extra calories contained in the junk food, and that’s a lot of extra pudge as the result of a stress binge.
The Stress and Weight Gain Study
How did researchers figure this one out? They took a group of women and gave them a standardized “comfort meal”; in this case, sausage, eggs, and biscuits and gravy… 930 calories worth. That makes it about equivalent to a typical burger-and-fries combo meal at your average fast food joint.
Apparently, the researchers defined “comfort food” as “Cracker Barrel”, but that’s neither here nor there.
The subjects all got the same amount of food- same calories, same amount of fat, same everything. And yet, the women who reported having a more stressful day on the day before the “comfort” meal ended up burning less calories during the next seven hours than those who were unstressed.
Science!
Here’s how you measure that, by the way. Every twenty minutes for seven hours, the women had their gas exchange measured. No, not that kind of gas… oxygen and carbon dioxide from inhalation and exhalation.
You see, energy metabolism relies on that whole oxygen in, carbon dioxide out process. Your body uses oxygen to help pull energy out of food, and as a consequence of those biochemical shenanigans, you get a bunch of carbon dioxide as a result, that the body then wants to get rid of (through exhalation).
Since those clever biochemists can figure out how much energy is created by a certain amount of oxygen (or how much carbon dioxide waste product would be produced by creating a certain amount of energy), by measuring how much oxygen was going in and how much carbon dioxide was coming out, the researchers could calculate how much energy was being burned off by the subject. Yeah, Science!
The Results of The Stress And Weight Gain Study
On average, the stressed women burned 104 less calories than the non-stressed women over that seven hour time period. To put that into perspective for you, there’s 3500 calories in a pound of fat. So not only were there a ton of extra fat and calories in the comfort food, but the stressed people- those most likely to reach for comfort food- had a slower metabolism as well!
Kind of sucks, hunh?
Okay, so this double whammy of weight gain may seem a little discouraging, but perhaps it’s best to focus on how we can use this information. We can’t avoid stress, but we can do our best to avoid foods that will only make things worse, right?
So the next time the TPS reports are due or the kids try to burn the house down or whatever other part of life is derailing, try to remind yourself that the last thing a stressed body needs is a slower metabolism. Try other stress relievers like exercise- a brisk walk outside will help elevate mood by the inhalation of the negative ions in fresh air.
Or if you do break down and binge, do your best to limit the damage… because in a stressed state, you’re doing damage at twice the normal rate.
Stay healthy!