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What you eat and what you do can influence your hormones dramatically. When this happens you can either gain weight or lose weight. Avoid these key areas to make sure you lose weight with your healthy weight loss diet. Don’t take for granted just how powerful hormones like these are in determining your weight loss success.

This one hormone that can cause so many problems is called Cortisol. Excess cortisol will stimulate your appetite and prompt more calories to be stored as fat, so it is very influential in your weight loss plan. These are 2 things you don’t want when trying to follow a healthy weight loss diet.

Cortisol also increases protein breakdown within the muscle, which means a slower metabolism and less calories burned. A key to successful weight loss is keeping your metabolism running at a fast rate so that you are always burning calories.

It decreases glucose utilization and increased insulin resistance, which means the glucose or sugars in your body are not used for energy as much as they should be. Instead they float around and eventually get stored as fat. This is strike two against your healthy weight loss diet and healthy eating plans.

One thing that directly increases cortisol is stress. Stress is the culprit in increasing cortisol levels and resistance to insulin and leptin. Stress can come from work issues, family issues, medical problems and even unhealthy foods.

Higher cortisol levels come from stress-induced insulin resistance and increased leptin. Well, when you have higher cortisol levels your leptin and insulin resistance get worse. It is a vicious cycle that keeps feeding on itself until you are overweight or obese. Despite all your healthy eating plans and healthy diet plans if stress is dominating your life then your healthy weight loss diet may be for nothing.

Those with extra fat in your belly, a round face, high blood sugars or high blood pressure most likely have elevated cortisol levels. These are tips for how to lower your cortisol levels.

Eat every few hours. When you wait longer than five hours between meals your body may start to release extra cortisol, which then increases your appetite.

By eating every few hours not only are you going to keep your cortisol levels low you are going to stimulate other hormones that help you feel full for a longer period of time and reduce that urge to keep eating. Also, eat lean protein at every feeding opportunity to trigger certain hormones that will help you to eat less food and burn more calories.

Of course you need to make sure that you also control your stress as I have discussed how important this is to controlling your cortisol levels. Reduce stressors in your life, set a regular sleeping schedule, and get plenty of exercise to maximize the benefits of your healthy weight loss diet.

Jayson Hunter is a Registered Dietitian with more than 10 years of experience helping people breakthrough and discover a healthier life. Learn more powerful nutrition tips at healthy eating guidelines.

Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/health-articles/why-cortisol-destroys-your-healthy-weight-loss-diet-1768404.html

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This entry was posted on Friday, January 22nd, 2010 at 6:10 PM and is filed under Diabetes, Hormones, Meditation & Relaxation, Nutrition, Taking Action, Weight Loss. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.