It could be that belly fat is your body's way of coping with stress Tara Pope reports today in the Wall St Journal (subscription only)
This month, a report in the medical journal Brain, Behavior and Immunity looked at the link between stress and the consumption of comfort foods, finding that there may be a physiological reason people tend to binge on fatty and sugar-laden foods during times of stress. In a series of rat studies, researchers at University of California-San Francisco fed two groups of rats a diet of rat chow and sugar water. But one group of rats lived more stressful lives, spending short periods of time during the day in a confined space. Stress hormone levels were higher in the confined rats, and the stressed rats started to eat less healthy chow and gulp down more sugar water.
But what happened next was surprising. As the stressed-out rats started to accumulate more belly fat, their stress hormones went back down. The higher the belly fat, the lower the animal's stress hormones. That suggests that gaining belly fat may be the body's coping mechanism for turning off the stress response. In addition, the theory is that stress hormones may somehow turn on the brain's reward center, and the result is that during times of stress, certain foods actually taste better, making you eat more of them.
"It's why comfort food may reduce stress," says Mary Dallman, UCSF physiology professor and lead author of the rat studies. "It may be that you feel better if you put on belly fat if you're under conditions of chronic stress."