At a Glance
Chronic stress increases cortisol, making you more likely to experience food cravings, poor sleep, and abdominal weight gain, leading to long-term health risks. Dr Kamal uses Hypnotherapy with NLP to help break this cycle by reducing emotional eating, reframing negative patterns, and fostering healthier coping strategies.
Stress Hormones and Weight Gain Are Interlinked
Have you noticed that you tend to reach for snacks late at night, whether you’re trying to meet a work deadline or studying for an exam?
Discussing stress and its many manifestations, like emotional eating and related weight gain, can be difficult. But keeping your emotions bottled up will only aggravate the situation.
In this blog post, we discuss how stress hormones and weight gain are more common than you realise, and how weight loss hypnosis with Dr Kamal can help address them effectively.
Common Signs You Are Gaining Weight Due to Stress
How does stress affect weight gain? Before we answer this question, let’s look at the common signs that you’re experiencing weight gain because of your mental health, and not due to lifestyle or dietary causes.
- You notice belly fat buildup. Stress-related weight gain often shows in your gut area. You may find your waistline expanding despite having an active lifestyle.
- Binge eating is a problem for you. Stress, cortisol, and weight gain go hand-in-hand. Cortisol spikes often lead you to reach for comfort food in response to stress, making you binge-eat, even when you aren’t hungry.
- You’re experiencing symptoms of poor gut health. Being stressed leads to issues such as bloating and irregular bowel movements. This can make it more difficult to lose weight.
- You’re often tired during the day. Chronic stress can make it difficult to sleep, making you feel fatigued. As a result, you’re less likely to commit to exercise and more likely to seek sugar and caffeine-rich food to offset the lethargy.
How Stress and Hormones Affect Your Body
Can stress hormones cause weight gain? The short answer is yes.
Stress hormones and weight gain are directly related. Cortisol is the stress hormone that sends your body into fight-or-flight mode when threatened. This can be in response to a real or perceived threat, and your metabolism is momentarily diverted towards emergency responses.
In these situations, your body starts metabolising fat and carbohydrates. When you experience a prolonged spike in stress hormones, you’re likely to end up craving salty, sugary, and fat-rich foods.
Let’s explain how stress and cortisol and weight gain work. When your cortisol levels spike, your insulin levels and blood pressure increase too. A 2022 study found that stress hormones and weight gain leading to obesity happen due to a reduction in self-regulation abilities, an increase in hunger-inducing hormones like leptin and ghrelin, and sleep disruption.
Uncontrolled weight gain leading to obesity can have a severe impact on your health. It makes you more prone to cardiac issues, musculoskeletal issues like joint pain and arthritis, fertility problems, and diabetes.
How Can Hypnotherapy Help Lose Weight and Manage Stress
The first step in your journey towards breaking the vicious cycle of stress hormones and weight gain is to accept that you’re dealing with this problem. You can then look at treatment options, such as hypnotherapy.
During hypnosis to help lose weight, I’ll help you reach a trance-like state, where you’re aware of your surroundings but in a more suggestive state. With my solution-focused hypnotherapy, I’ll work with you towards your goal: to reduce stress and emotional eating as a coping mechanism.
My sessions for weight loss hypnosis in the UK generally involve positive visualisation techniques and the introduction of healthier coping mechanisms. At London Hypnotherapy and NLP, we don’t focus on triggers of anxiety and stress eating, but rather on how you can move beyond these triggers without succumbing to them.
When you feel calm and more confident, you’re less likely to experience stress hormones and weight gain as a result. By blending weight loss hypnotherapy with NLP, you can develop a positive mindset and reframe negative and self-limiting beliefs with empowering ones.
How Hypnotherapy and NLP Differ
While hypnotherapy will change your subconscious mind, NLP will change the language and thoughts associated with it.
For instance, you might find yourself reaching for sugary comfort foods before every public speaking situation because of one bad experience many years ago. Perhaps you use phrases like “sugar helps me be better at my job” to justify your action. With hypnosis to help lose weight, we’ll address this self-limiting belief and also change your mindset to “I can ace my presentation based on my merit and hard work”.
Hypnotherapy With Dr Kamal Helps Manage Stress and Emotional Eating
You don’t need to be governed by stress hormones and weight gain your whole life. While stress is a common reflex action, it shouldn’t become your reality. I’m a Clinical Hypnotherapist and NLP practitioner based in Harley Street, London.
With 25 years of experience, I blend Clinical Hypnotherapy, Psychotherapy, Counselling, NLP, and Psychology to create a bespoke weight loss hypnotherapy programme for each of my clients.
I use hypnosis for weight loss to achieve the best possible outcomes for anxiety, stress, and related emotional eating. As a direct result of my in-person or online stress hypnotherapy sessions, many of my clients have reported that they were able to stop resorting to unhealthy coping mechanisms like alcohol, drugs, or calorie-rich food.
Call, email, or fill out a form to book a consultation today and take back control of your relationship with food and stress.