Is Stress Making You Fat?

When I quit the seven-day-a-week job that I had held for 21 years as manager of a retail operation, I decided to lose weight and get fit. In retrospect, I wonder if the stress of that unrelenting schedule contributed significantly to my obesity.

Perhaps so, according to a report by Zofia Zukowska of Georgetown University and her colleagues that was published in Nature Medicine.

Some of us suspected a connection between stress and surplus pounds, but now the evidence is in. Using mice as subjects, researchers uncovered a biological link between stress and obesity. Scientists subjected mice to chronic stress—either standing in cold water an hour a day or being caged with a more aggressive alpha mouse for 10 minutes a day. Then the researchers gave the mice either regular food or a high-fat, high-sugar diet (junk food).

According to the findings, the stressed junk-food eaters gained a significant amount of weight after only two weeks (about twice as much as the more relaxed junk-food eaters). And the fat the stressed mice gained was more likely to be the bad kind that leads to high blood pressure, early diabetes and high cholesterol.

More research on humans is needed, of course. In the meantime, if you’re trying to lose weight or maintain your weight, you might want to consider getting your stress level under control.