Apparently it does but can not find anything concrete to back it up does anyone have any studies or infomation to help a brother out?
When I'm stressed, I can't lose weight even when my calorie intake is negative (due to exercise) for a week or more. Stress causes your body to hold on to fat stores "just in case". Its a physiological defense mechanism, or so I've been told.
Stress is extremely detrimental. You have to have your head right. If stress is a problem for you, you need to find a way to eliminate it or avoid it. Fighting through it only makes it worse. Mindfulness/meditation techniques (haven't used much myself, love it when I did) can help. Eating right can help (Tim Bradley has a lot to say about what nutrition can do for your state of mind). Training can help (though for some people it's a cause of stress, not a stress reliever). Weed can help (keep the Doritos far from thee, though). Sleep can help (not possible for everybody, but sometimes you need to crash and give yourself more time for sleep. Trouble sleeping? See above.) Cutting off people that cause stress can help. If it's work-related (something I'm going through right now), you need to either make a change or have a worthwhile goal/next step in sight that gives purpose to enduring your current situation. Once you start seeing the situation as hopeless or going nowhere, stress compounds and can turn into apathy, depression, anxiety, etc. One thing that can help immensely with stress is alcohol. HEAR ME NOW: That doesn't mean it's worth it for an athlete. A college kid gets burned out all week and binge drinks all weekend, fine. That **** will kill your boxing though. From my experience, hard training and hard drinking don't mix.
As far as studies not off the top of my head, but I am a Licensed Professional Counselor who deals with this stuff on a daily basis. Probably 50 % of my caseload is regarding stress. As an individual is under more than typical amounts of stress, the body's immune system will break down, thus causing more susceptibility to colds, flu, and so forth. In addition, stress can cause depression, which affects the feel good chemicals in the brain such as dopamine and serotonin. As for weight loss, when we are under stress many of us increase snacking, eat foods with a more high caloric or sugar/fatty based content. As for things that can be done to safeguard against stress, avoid smoking(nicotine is a stimulant) and drinking(alcohol is a depressant). These are big nos. This may sound silly, but limit electronic usage, monitor TV shows that are watched, specifically those that are violent. I tell everyone to stay off Facebook. I absolutely despise what Facebook is used for. Limit the news you watch. We are only able to handle hearing about so many plane accidents, murders, and so forth daily. We are a society that doesn't realize the amount of stress we put ourselves under on a daily basis by just clicking a button. As for eating, research has shown that eating unhealthy causes yeast buildup in the intestines, which causes serotonin to not properly dock in the proper receptor sites in the brain. You can find research showing the effect of olive leaf extract, fish oils, and magnesium taurate to name a few on mood and anxiety. Moderate levels of exercise several times a week are shown to increase dopamine in brain, while intense exercise over several weeks can cause overtraining and negatively effect dopamine levels. I hope this is a little more of what you were after with some knowledge based examples.
