fattyprejudice

Do you run to the refrigerator when you get frustrated?  Stop at the nearest mini mart for a quick snack when work has you frazzled? Want to bury your sorrows in a pint of ice cream?  If you answered yes to any of these questions, then you, my friend are an emotional eater.  I know I am.  I grew up in a very stressful environment and as far back as I can remember, my cravings for food seemed to rule my life.  I managed to stay slim during my younger years, I believe, only because we were poor and there wasn’t usually extra food in the house to binge on without repercussions from mom.  Now however, all of my siblings and myself suffer from obesity.  I didn’t become “fat” until my first pregnancy with my son when I was 23, and then I packed on the pounds.  I gained a whopping 77 pounds with him, and my doctor said to me one day, “do you think that is all baby fat?  Do you think you will lose it all when the baby is born?  Think again my dear!”  Was he ever correct!

Even though my marriage was ok, it was still stressful.  My husband was a self employed landscape contractor and business was slow and I was a self employed hairdresser, this meant no disability pay for me when I took time off to have my baby.  After he was born, I was a stay at home mom until he was about 1 year old so we were constantly looking for ways to make money and worrying about how we would make ends meet.  This caused so much stress that all I wanted to do was eat.  My choices for this stressful eating were not the best either,  I fell in love with, of all things, fruit cake!  Not just any fruit cake, it was a lusciously sweet, nutty and fruity fruit cake!  I bought several of them and kept them hidden in a cupboard and nibbled on them all day long.

There have been clinical studies on mice that show a correlation between stress and fat.  Below is an excerpt from an interesting article at DLife.com , a website for people with diabetes, you can follow the link if you are interested in reading more.

“The Stress-Fat Connection
Stress is like a steroid for fat cells. When the body is stressed, one of the substances it releases is a molecule that causes heart rate and blood pressure to increase, along with a number of other physiological reactions. One other thing this molecule does is to unlock certain receptors in fat cells, allowing them to grow bigger than normal and also to multiply.

Scientists at Georgetown University have found a connection between stress, a high-calorie diet, and extreme weight gain. These scientists tested two groups of mice — a stressed group and a non-stressed group. Each group was fed normal diets and high-fat and high-sugar (“comfort food”) diets. The stressed mice on the high-fat and high-sugar diet gained twice as much fat as unstressed mice on the same diet. The stressed animals used and stored fat differently than the non-stressed ones.

The researchers then experimented with blocking these specific fat-cell receptors or removing this receptor’s gene from the abdominal fat cells. When they did this, the stressed mice on high-fat, high-sugar diets did not become obese. In addition to not getting as fat, they also did not suffer the metabolic changes linked to stress and diet, including glucose intolerance (prediabetes, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, etc.) and fatty liver — an accumulation of fat in the liver that is often associated with obesity and diabetes. The lead author of the published report called the effect of breaking this chain of molecular events “remarkable.”“

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