You may be one of millions who are trying to drop a few pounds. The latest facts are sobering.
More than 44 million Americans are overweight. Over 300,000 die each year as a direct consequence. The makers of diet pills sold on TV would have you believe that cortisol is to blame.
In today’s Health Alert, I’ll tell you why they don’t work I’ll also give you some advice for staying lean I’ve used with great success in my clinic.
Battling Excess Weight: Is Cortisol Really to Blame?
Cortisol is your body’s main stress hormone. But it does a lot more than respond to stress levels. You use it to regulate blood pressure, energy production, immune function, and inflammatory response.
Your cortisol levels are at their lowest when you’re healthy and calm. But get stuck in traffic, have a fender bender or burn your New York strip and cortisol floods into your bloodstream like a dam burst. There’s no doubt you release more cortisol during times of stress. But does it really make you fat?
Popular weight loss products try to link cortisol to weight gain by pointing to a 2000 Yale University study that showed that women who respond poorly to stress tend to have a belly. This is because excess cortisol can affect where and how your body stores fat. But cortisol itself does not cause weight gain. In fact, it has the opposite effect.
Have you ever seen a stressed out animal? When a dog is under stress, increased cortisol will cause it to lose its appetite. Over time, the dog becomes very thin and starts to waste away. That’s cortisol at work. The same is true in humans.
Cortisol gives your body the chance to pool all of its resources to deal with a crisis. Under these conditions, your appetite will disappear. Think back to the last time you panicked or became distressed. Having lunch was probably the last thing on your mind.
So don’t waste your money on these “quick fix” cortisol-fighting products, hoping that they’ll melt away your excess fat. Those are just empty promises not based on science.
Your Real Fast Track to a Lean Body
I have a better method of weight management. The idea is simple: Eat the foods that help you feel full. The absence of satiety—the feeling of fullness—is the prime reason most diets fail.
Denying yourself food and nutrition is just not necessary. And denial is a game you’re not likely to win over the long run. Sooner or later, most people will give in. Instead of denial, emphasize what you can eat. It’s more sustainable for the long term. How do you know which foods will make you feel satisfied without making you fat? Use two easy features of the food you eat: Energy-density and glycemic index.
Foods with low energy density will fill you up without the calories you would consume to feel the same way from other foods. In other words, you can eat more for less.
Foods with water and fiber are among the lowest-energy-density foods available. Foods that are dry and made with vegetable oils—with all the water and fiber removed—are the highest.
Contrary to what I sometimes hear, even though watermelon has a high glycemic index, you could eat watermelon until you burst and never get fat because it has very low energy density. Potato chips, on the other hand, which are dry and cooked in oil, are five times more energy dense than a baked potato. I’m not saying you should eat baked potatoes on a daily basis either, but having them won’t pack on the pounds like chips will.
In effect, using energy density and the glycemic index will simply bring you back to a natural way of eating. As you may remember from previous Health Alerts, understanding the glycemic index helps you focus on foods that keep your blood sugar low. (See Article 21)
A spike in blood sugar will trigger an insulin response. This in turn signals your body to make and store fat. Low-energy-density foods, which are also low on the glycemic index, will make you feel full without promoting fat building.
To Your Good Health,
Al Sears, MD