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Key points
- Stress and weight regulation are major public health problems.
- Stress and body weight have physiological, cognitive, behavioral, social, and economic connections.
- Their interrelationships can be problematic, but also offer possible solutions.
Stress and obesity are two very large public health problems. Because obesity can be more easily quantified, it is probably more widely accepted than stress as a source of physical disorders among biomedical researchers. But both are high on the list of major concerns among experts and members of the lay public alike.
Outside of research on their interconnections, they are also largely viewed as separate health problems, with perhaps just a few commonly known areas of intersection. These include the relationship between emotional stress and overeating, and the distress we may experience when we overindulge.
When we think of stress affecting our health, it probably conjures images of the damage caused when anger raises our blood pressure or the idea that stress-related changes in our immune systems make us more vulnerable to infections. And when we think of the health effects of overeating, we probably imagine the direct, harmful effects on our bodies of excess fat, sugar, and salt.
Those are legitimate concerns for many of us, but there are others in which stress and how we cope with it, and eating and weight regulation, interact with one another.
Physiological Interactions
Let's start with a way that body composition may interact with stress at a physiological level. There is reason to suspect that fat tissue influences the production of the stress hormone cortisol. Cortisol has many functions that are essential for life, but its excess production is one of the primary consequences of stress that appears responsible for its health-damaging effects. Thus, physiologic effects of obesity may have negative health consequences through processes involving cortisol that add to or increase those caused by stress-induced cortisol secretion.
Turning things around, stress physiology and, in particular, cortisol may influence where fat is distributed in the body. Specifically, cortisol promotes an accumulation of fatty tissue in the abdomen. Central adiposity, as this is called, is thought to be particularly unhealthy due to metabolic effects on nearby vital organs.
Cognitive Connections
While the idea that emotional distress promotes overconsumption of so-called comfort foods may be familiar, it is possible that stress has nonemotional effects that also promote overeating. For example, stress may undermine our capacity for self-control, allowing us to succumb to temptation caused by the immediate availability of a tasty snack rather than saving it for later.
Behavioral Links
Other ways stress may promote obesity involve health-related behaviors. There is evidence that stress promotes physical inactivity and reduces the amount and quality of sleep. Both lack of exercise and inadequate sleep, in turn, are problematic for weight regulation and can promote obesity.
Interpersonal Consequences
There are also social-psychological connections between body weight and shape and stress. Being obese is stigmatizing, and the experience of being stigmatized can produce a biological stress response. More broadly, culturally shared standards for physical attractiveness contribute to negative thoughts and feelings people may have about their body weight and shape. Body image dissatisfaction appears to play a role in the development of eating disorders, which, in addition to being problematic for mental health, can also have deleterious physical health effects.
Socioeconomics
Food insecurity and malnutrition form an often hidden public health problem related to eating and body composition. They are also sources of stress. Their prevalence and impact can be accentuated by macro-social forces such as those responsible for economic downturns.
Signposts to Solutions
There are no quick fixes for the ways in which interactions between stress and weight regulation can be harmful. But awareness of these connections can point us toward possible solutions.
Evidence that stress and being overweight or obese may combine to produce health problems that you thought were associated with just one of these two problems may increase your motivation to deal with the other.
Awareness of the harmful effects of central adiposity may prompt the use of waist size, in addition to total body weight or the body mass index, as a way of monitoring your efforts at weight management.
Now you may have an additional reason to crank up your exercise routine and sleep hygiene. And to be supportive of friends and family members who may be struggling with being overweight or obese.
And perhaps food insecurity is something to keep in mind when the time comes to decide which charities to donate to at the end of the year. Or even before then, as the warm weather encourages outdoor cooking and eating.
Copyright 2024 Richard J. Contrada, Ph.D.
References
Tomiyama, A. J. (2019). Stress and obesity. Annual Review of Psychology, 70, 703–718.
Rodriguez, A. C. I., Epel, E. S., White, M. L., Standen, E. C., Seckl, J. R., & Tomiyama, A. J. (2015). Hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis dysregulation and cortisol activity in obesity: a systematic review. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 62, 301–318.
Wolfson, J. A., Garcia, T., & Leung, C. W. (2021). Food insecurity is associated with depression, anxiety, and stress: evidence from the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. Health Equity, 5(1), 64–71.
