I can personally speak to this problem. Having been born three months early, I struggle with what’s called a congenital neuro-endocrine weakness. This means that when I get stressed, my body holds water and weight.
I noticed this link for the first time when my family threw me out of the house and disinherited me. I went from a tiny size 4 to size 24 in a few short months.
Talk about feeling stressed out!
Doctors couldn’t help me at all. All they said was that I was eating more calories than I was expending. Not true!
I tried low-carb, high protein diets, high-fat diets, cleanses and even did a green juice fast with fish only 3 days a week for 10 months, and I gained weight! This experience launched me on a journey to learn everything I could about the body and weight gain.
One time, I noted that deep-breathing and meditation seemed to make me lose weight, but then I was in a train crash and the stress of that experience made me gain again!
I did a lot of diagnostic testing and noticed that my body seemed to produce too much cortisol. I personally noted a link between my stress, high cortisol and weight gain.
Nobody believed what I was reporting!
Recently, I was vindicated by a flurry of scientific research proving that stress causes a rise in the glucocorticoid (GC) stress hormone cortisol, which is linked to the development of obesity. According to NIH research, people who are chronically exposed to high levels of cortisol, develop abdominal obesity, metabolic syndrome (MetS), and eventually cardiovascular diseases (CVD).
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5958156/
Research at Stanford University gives insight into the reason why chronic exposure to stress is so intimately linked with obesity. The key lies in the relationship between the fat cells in your body and the time of day when your body releases stress hormones.
According to Mary Teruel, “Even if you get significantly stressed or treat your rheumatoid arthritis with glucocorticoids, you won’t gain weight, as long as stress or glucocorticoid treatment happens only during the day. But if you experience chronic, continuous stress or take glucocorticoids at night, the resulting loss of normal circadian glucocorticoid oscillations will result in significant weight gain.”
What about stressed out service members and veterans?
In the Millennium Cohort Study of U.S. service members and veterans, researchers applied longitudinal analysis techniques to evaluate data collected from 2001–2008.
The researchers found a significant association of PTSD with subsequent 3‐year weight gain and the development of obesity.
To quote the study results:
“Among individuals who newly screened positive for PTSD (new onset) or screened positive at two consecutive time points (persistent), they were significantly more likely to gain greater than three percent of their baseline body weight compared with those who did not screen positive for PTSD.
While those with resolved PTSD were also at elevated odds for weight gain, the relationship was not as strong or consistent. These findings suggest that even when symptoms appear to improve, there may be some residual factors that may continue to influence changes in body weight.
This persistent temporal association of PTSD with weight gain is consistent with other previous studies among veterans and female nurses (6, 14). In addition, this study found that new‐onset and persistent PTSD was associated with weight loss. This psychological condition plays an important role in body weight regulation through mechanisms that as yet are undefined.”
The study goes on to say that the weight gain is due to “dysregulation of neuroendocrine and autonomic nervous systems may directly affect sleep, metabolism, and appetite, which could cause changes in weight.”