Quarantine 15 Diet Takeover Week Day 1: Stress

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Chicago, Illinois I've gained the quarantine 15 help.

Any advice? This is JJ Virgin, four time New York Times best selling author, celebrity nutrition expert and Fitness hall of Famer. I've been on a lifelong quest for answers to the toughest health questions and now I'm sharing what I found with you. Welcome to Ask the health expert. Marcy12 from Instagram says, JJ, I've gained the quarantine 15 and more and I'm really struggling to get back to my pre quarantine weight. Any advice? Hey JJ here and I am fascinated by weight loss, resistance, everything that can get in the way of you losing weight and cause you to gain weight. And I believe that with quarantine 15 there are a variety of reasons that you could be struggling. And I'm going to cover this question. I can't just answer this question in one answer, so I'm taking it over all week. You're going to be hearing me address this, so stay tuned. I'll be right back with the answer.

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You to suspicious texts, emails and deep fake videos. Learn more@mcafee.com online protection. All right, there's a variety of things that could be contributing to that quarantine 15 and more. And I'm going to unpack them over a series of answers. So answer number one, Stress. Stress can make you gain weight, age faster, and even lose your sex drive. So let's talk about that because. And I'll just do a shout out. You know, when this all started to happen, I forget who it was. Some celebrity came up and said, oh, there's going to be a baby boomer after this. And you know, actually it's been just the opposite when you are stressed out. It's not when baby booms happen. So why would stress contribute to the quarantine 15 weight gain? Well, for a couple of different reasons. And then we can talk about what you can do to offset this. Number one, what happens when you're stressed? When you're stressed initially, your stress hormones shoot up, which also causes your blood sugar to shoot up, which also can cause your insulin to shoot up, which can all contribute to belly fat laying more fat around your belly, making it harder to burn off chronic stress. So over time, these stress hormones get more difficult and more difficult for your body to produce and you start getting more burnt out. And you can even get to that. The worst of all case, tired and wired, where you're exhausted but you just can't seem to sleep. But all along the way, these hormones are wreaking havoc on your body. And specifically I'm talking about cortisol and adrenaline. But really, cortisol. And what it can do, first of all, is that when you've got elevated stress, it can lower serotonin. That's going to do a couple Things, number one, make you crave sugar. I always say you get cravings when you're stressed, and it's just not for broccoli and it's not for Brussels sprouts. And I think you know what I mean there. So you get stressed, your body starts to crave sugar, and you start to crave more stimulants. And then you don't sleep as well, because also when you interfere with serotonin, then your body can't make melatonin. Now you're not sleeping as well, we're not sleeping as well. Now you're hungrier. Now you're more insulin resistant. Now you're craving more sugar. Now you see the problem, right? It starts this really downward spiral. So that's the first thing. Also, stress can get in the way of a couple different hormone functions besides raising blood sugar, that then can raise insulin. Stress also can interrupt both your sex hormone production, your estrogen and progesterone and testosterone. But also it can lower your thyroid function. So all of these are super important for keeping that balance. That helps you be able to burn fat, not store it helps you build muscle and helps you have a good balanced metabolism. So that's the next thing. But wait, there is more. I know this is, like, ridiculous and not fair. The next thing is what it does to your gut is stress is one of the top things that makes your gut more permeable, leaky gut. And when that happens, now you're going to have more reactions to food. When that happens, you get more inflammation. Inflammation is its own risk factor for obesity. And then also, of course, the leaky gut makes you crave more of these foods and can start to disrupt your gut microbiome, which can cause you to gain weight, too. Okay, so this is all not great news, except, you know, you can't fix the problem unless you know where it's coming from, right? So if you're looking at this going, yeah, I have been stressed, and I will say, pulling back the kimono in the first week of the coronavirus situation, this whole thing hitting my weight went up a couple of pounds with zero changes. Nothing changed in my life but the stress. So, you know, it's just amazing. And why I keep saying, your body's not a bank account, it's a chemistry lab. So what can we do to help lower the stress? Since we can't change the situation, we have to change our approach to the situation. And so I love things like tapping. The tapping app from my buddy Nick Ortner. The tapping solution can be super helpful Meditation's another one that could be great for you. I shout out Emily Fletcher of Ziva Meditation. High intensity interval training can help your sympathetic nervous system handle Learn how to handle stress better. That can be great. A Little Dog is another great one. You know, watching something fun, taking a hot bath. What it really means is you've got to find those things that you that help you handle the stress and it's different for everybody. Then I'm doing a couple shout outs on other things that can help here, and one specifically is vitamin C. Now we've talked a lot about vitamin C for immune function, but it can also help with keeping cortisol where it needs to be. So vitamin C is super important here, along with a lot of the different adaptogens. But vitamin C is my biggie there. So think about it. There's a lot of different reasons and we're taking it over all week to talk about what could be causing the quarantine 15 for you. But my guess is stress is playing at least a minor role here and if so, figure out what you're going to do to address it. This is JJ with Ask the Health Expert. I do this five times a week, so make sure you never miss a show by going to subscribetojay.com.

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