Now let's talk about the difference between stress that's harmful for you and stress that will keep you from losing weight. There's a difference in the right amount. Stress is actually a normal and good response. To keep you safe, you actually need stress. So the first thing I'm going to do is to help you see stress in a different light, and I think you'll be surprised to see that it's not always the enemy that we think it is. Stress helps you to get motivated to get into action and generally to keep you safe.

Now think about it. Stress helps you to run fast, to start working on a project, to meet a certain deadline, to get out of bed in the morning and get to work or appointments on time. Stress like this is actually a good thing because it helps you get through challenging situations. Unfortunately, chronic and extreme stress has become a socially accepted norm and an unconscious but damaging enigma for most people, especially midlife women who are fighting weight gain. Stress can be helpful until it crosses the line of becoming chronic and it alters your hormones and the cells in your brain and your body long term. At that point, it becomes harmful and causes weight gain in midlife and also during menopause. That leads me to point number two. Stress affects at least two of your hormones and also the cells in your brain and your body, which make weight loss very difficult, possibly impossible.

First, stress gets registered in your amygdala, which is a part of your brain that is associated with fear, anxiety, and emotions like stress and even motivation. In other words, it is driven by hormones that cause you to have a fight, flight, freeze, or even fawn response, also known as people pleasing in response to true life circumstances. Now, as I've pointed out, sometimes you actually need to be taking actions around stressful situations to create boundaries and protection for keeping yourself safe and for upholding your own needs and goals. Like when someone makes comments about you that are not true or that are hurtful, maybe a colleague or a friend takes advantage of you or you're tasked with too many responsibilities at home or work. In each of these cases, the amygdala releases stress hormones, especially cortisol and adrenaline that can cause you to take actions such as sharing how you think and feel or telling someone what you need or saying no to extra work. But long-term, this exposure to chronic stress hormones going into fight, flight, freeze or fawn can also be harmful. What's more ongoing levels of cortisol trigger fat storage by causing excess, circulating fat to be relocated and deposited in the abdomen, which of course makes weight loss totally impossible. Here's why. Cortisol, your stress hormone and progesterone compete for the same precursor called pregnenolone, the mother of all naturally occurring steroid hormones. The more cortisol or stress you have, the less progesterone your body makes to keep up with the cortisol demands with less,

You create less testosterone. Less testosterone means more estrogen and hormonal imbalance, ultimately resulting in more mood swings, more health issues, less muscle tone, and less weight loss with more fat storage. Not only does chronic stress deposit fat in the abdomen, it also increases the size of that small almond shape of your amygdala and these stress hormones then alter a part of your prefrontal cortex, the ventral medial prefrontal cortex. This part of your brain allows you to make good decisions to consider and analyze external information or options, and then to regulate your emotions and to take effective healthy actions. In other words, chronic stress and the hormones associated with it change your thoughts and your ability to make wise decisions and actions that align with your honoring your personal boundaries to support your goals like weight loss, your think, your feel and your do stay aligned and this neurological change is true.

That gets altered even when the stressor goes away. If you have been exposed to long-term stress on the other hand with occasional acute stress, you experience more activity in the ventral medial prefrontal cortex, which allows you to see the full range of options, the full range of thoughts and alternatives and solutions to stressful problems rather than just going to grab a break room cookie. Now, imagine how less stress might allow you to align your thoughts with taking consistent actions, committed actions that support permanent weight loss in midlife and during menopause. So your think, your feel and your do stay aligned when your amygdala and ventral medial prefrontal cortex are supported, you are more likely to be less impulsive and to make plans for staying on track long-term even in midlife and even with the demands of your career and family. You can see how chronic stress is like a vicious cycle when your anxiety center that amygdala is enlarged.

See, it creates more neural pathways to be directed to that part of your brain so that ongoing stress only makes future stress impossible to handle. Another part of the brain that regulates mood, memory and learning is the hippocampus, and while chronic stress enlarges the amygdala, it actually reduces the size of your hippocampus. Now, when the hippocampus becomes smaller, short and long-term memory are altered. I hope you're starting to see how chronic stress might play a big role when you are trying to lose weight to create long-term automatic habits that consistently support weight loss. It's essential to have stored long-term memories that are connected to the good feelings you create from taking healthy actions rather than random, impulsive actions that sabotage weight loss and your life. Keep watching because I'm going to be sharing a simple but impactful approach to decrease stress, including whole foods you can eat that decrease stress. If you notice that you're struggling with your stress and want more than just this video to help you reach permanent weight loss at midlife, click on the link below to join my free Crush Your Cravings program. In this program, you'll get a free five day video series to help you crush any craving that pops up, plus you get access to me with a free private coaching session.