THE HIDDEN SYMPTOMS OF STRESS WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT
Stress isn’t always bad. In fact, we need a certain amount of stress to thrive. What is more commonly the issue with stress is the amount and type of stress balance in our day to day lifestyle. Stress, or too much of it, is a root to so many discomforts and diseases and it is one of the most common areas that we need to address with our clients before they can achieve, and sustain, successful weight loss. Stress comes in a variety of forms, it’s not just ‘perceived’ but it also can come in the form of multitasking constantly, getting low quality or quantity of sleep, lacking nourishment or hydration, too much or too little movement, and more.
For women, stress tends to be at the root of things like sex hormone imbalances, pms and menstrual cycle dysregulation, digestive discomforts, slow metabolism and weight loss resistance.
How to Know if You Are Stressed
Let’s start with the symptoms we commonly know and can feel with stress:
Worry or overwhelm
Headaches
Muscle tension
Challenge focusing or feeling brain fog
Under or over eating
Trouble sleeping
When our lives are busy, these may become a normal experience. But let’s correct that with the reminder that normal for you, doesn’t mean they are actually normal or healthy. Chronic stress over time is what causes the bigger issues and ultimately, disease. There are also some lesser known ways that chronic stress can manifest like:
Bloating or constipation
Morning grogginess
Afternoon energy dips
Delayed, missing or early menstrual cycles
PMS symptoms like severe cramps, clots, pain and moods
Thyroid, mineral and gut imbalances
Weight loss resistance
Carrying the effects of chronic stress can be the reason you are unable to progress further in your goals. If any of these sound like you, let’s dive into how stress is causing these symptoms and what you can do to help relieve them.
Bloating or Constipation
Stress can present itself in digestive issues and most people look for the cause of this in their food choices. I see so many cutting out lots and lots of foods or food groups blaming the food for the bloat or constipation.
It's actually less likely that it's the food causing your bloat and more likely it's either HOW you are eating or what's going on in your gut (the environment) that is affecting your level of bloat. Our bodies react to stress with a fight or flight response, so in our primal way we prepare to escape from the predator chasing us (or now, our 100 item to-do list). Our body sends blood and reserves to the most immediately useful areas to get us out of the stressful situation. Digestion won’t help with the flight so that gets left for later. If you want to know more details, check out this article by the IBS and Gut Health Clinic.
While we need to address the root of the stress, you can help your digestive symptoms with mindful eating; by shifting your focus to the task in hand, you will not be feeding your body in a stressed state.
HOW to eat to support bloat (digestion actually starts in the brain):
- Eat undistracted (no TV, book or phone)
- Drink water around meals (you should drink ⅓ of your body weight throughout the day)
- Eat in a relaxed state (take a few deep breaths before eating)
- Set your utensil or food down between bites to support eating slower and focus on the flavors
- Chew until the food in your mouth is almost liquid!
If you still find bloat present, this is when you may need to look a bit deeper into your causes of stress and methods of relieving it. That’s where our coaches can help!
We look at your lifestyle and health because on top of stress, your cause of bloat and constipation could be:
- Low stomach acid
- Trouble breaking down food, enzymes/bile
- Overgrowths in your gut, bacteria, yeast
- Overall gut balance
We help so many women and men with digestive issues, check out what they have to say here.
Morning Grogginess and Afternoon Energy Dips
If you wake up feeling tired, disorientated and foggy, these could be signs of sleep inertia. While the symptoms usually only last between 15-60 minutes, some people have known it to last for a few hours.
Stress causes sleep to be broken so your body and brain are not getting the restorative sleep that they need. To set yourself up for the best night’s sleep you can, I suggest reading my blog post on restoring your sleep.
This article from Sleep Foundation also suggests keeping a sleep diary, so you can log when you sleep and wake, how you feel you slept and how you feel throughout the day. It might be that you think you’re giving yourself enough time to sleep but you need to give yourself the best chance by what you do all day. Consider your caffeine intake, your movement, light exposure, relaxation time and stressors.
Not sleeping well is linked to afternoon energy dips, not just because of the lack of rest but also because of the cortisol (stress hormone) dysregulation that occurs. Sunlight and gentle movement are two ways to help counter the effects of a poor sleep. Can you factor in a post-lunch walk? This will aid your digestion, expose you to sunlight (even on a cloudy day) to steady your circadian rhythm, give your body more energy and give your brain a chance to recoup. Walking outdoors is actually a form of meditation so it will give you perspective on your busy afternoon ahead.
PMS and Menstrual Cycles
Similar to digestion, when your body releases cortisol in its fight or flight response, other functions get priority over your menstruation. This can lead to missing or longer periods, delayed gaps between periods, unpredictable cycles and spotting.
Or, you might have noticed your periods getting more painful, this can be due to stress as well because stress can cause a decrease in progesterone and this causes the uterus to contract leading to more painful cramps. As women, we have likely all suffered from PMS which can be worse some months more than others, stress is a big reason why. As mentioned above, stress increases cortisol levels and this plays a part in PMS symptoms as well as the release of neurotransmitters (hello mood fluctuations). If you’d like to know more, have a look here.
Your period is your health report card. It tells you a lot about how your body is handling the lifestyle you are living. If you listen closely enough, you can make adjustments early on to correct and support bigger issues later on.
Thyroid, Mineral and Gut Imbalances
Stress can deplete minerals and stomach acid that are essential for keeping out bacterial pathogens and which support optimal thyroid function.
Stress is one of the top contributors to digestive issues, autoimmunity and disease. When we are stressed we run through our minerals much faster as our body is on a so-called hyper-drive.
Most of the time when stress is high, nourishment is low (or poor) which only adds fuel to the fire too. With low minerals and nutrients there is a common theme of seeing digestive issues, bacterial imbalances, hypothyroidism and a slow metabolic system (read more here) in response to chronic stress.
As mentioned, prolonged stress can cause imbalances in gut bacteria which can eventually lead to an IBS and IBD diagnosis. We run labs on clients who might need to dig deeper into understanding the root cause of their issues. Partnering a deeper dive with our nutrition coaching, we can find a more supportive dietary approach to make food and consistency easier, enjoyable and sustainable.
As health and nutrition coaches, we look at your entire dietary intake, including minerals to understand more about “what got you here”.
How Stress Makes Weight Loss Harder
I have touched partly on this above with the impact of stress on your body. The most important thing to remember is that we are meant to handle stress, but too much or too high levels of stress chronically is going to make our body feel threatened and therefore cause it to want to protect.
So what lifestyle factors can cause too much chronic stress and cause our body to go into protective mode?
We know that stress comes in different forms, it’s not just what we perceive like our kids fighting or workload overwhelm. Stress is also:
Under eating
Over exercising
Nutrient deficiencies
Lacking sleep in amount or quality
Not getting enough sunlight
Gut infections or yeast overgrowths
Not enough self-care, fun and joy
Constantly multi-tasking
Lacking hydration
So What Can You Do To Help Relieve Your Stress?
I go into more detail in this blog post but for a quick rundown, here’s what I suggest:
Set your circadian rhythm with exposure to sunlight throughout the day and limiting blue light at night. This will improve your metabolism and your quality of sleep
Allocate time for relaxation. This could be 5 minutes of meditation, half an hour of reading, a bath or a short walk. Whatever works for you and can fit into your day. Read this blog for how to make your 24 hours feel like enough!
Meal prep. When our days are busy, nutrition can go out the window and we may grab something to go without considering the nutritional value (or lack of). If you meal prep at the start of the week, your ‘to go’ is better thought through and balanced. If you struggle with this, get in touch with our coaches.
Movement. Focus on getting a minimum of 7,000 steps in per day. If outdoors, it can also help you get that vitamin D!
Most coaching programs will recommend more cardio or less carbs when you stop seeing progress, failing to take into consideration you as a WHOLE person. If those simple tweaks worked, and worked long term, you wouldn’t still be out here searching for an answer. Weight loss and/or changing your physique is so much more involved than the old “calories in-calories out” mentality.
Working with me (or one of my coaches) means we’ll help you identify where change is needed while helping you cultivate new habits, align your internal health (like digestion and hormones), optimize your metabolism and build self-integrity (saying you’ll do something and follow through) to create consistency in your behaviors.
So much more than calories or more cardio, right?