A Vicious Cycle to Belly Fat

You’ve probably heard that cortisol is a stress hormone and that stress increases belly fat.

Did you know that having belly fat can increase cortisol?

You feel stress so your cortisol elevates. You get belly fat. You have belly fat and your cortisol elevates and puts on more belly fat.

Mother Nature, you are just mean! What a vicious cycle!

How do you manage this cycle? How do you reduce the amount of excessive cortisol in your body when

The three things you need to consider are exercise, diet and lifestyle.

Shocker! Right? Doesn’t everything come down to those three things?

Very, very briefly here are a a few tips:

Exercise: Lift weights. Before doing high intensity interval training (HIIT) again...lift some heavy weight.

Diet: Monitor hunger, energy and cravings. If you are over-hungry, have low energy and have cravings, your cortisol and other hormone are out of balance. Start by eating frequently (protein!) enough to prevent getting over hungry, but not so often that you never experience any level of hunger.

Lifestyle: Reduce your exposure to estrogen producing foods and products. Foods that are  high  pesticides and foods that are phyto-estrogens (like soy). Products like plastics, cosmetics and cleaning agents contain chemicals that disrupt your hormonal balance, too.