Stressed out? Don’t worry, it’ll help you lose weight

BEING stressed may help you lose weight, say researchers.

Mild psychological pressure was found to trigger hormones which activate healthy ‘brown fat’.

This in turn burns glucose in the body to create heat – and eats up calories in the process.

Around 90 per cent of fat in an adult’s body is the unhealthy white variety, which soaks up calories and stores them in bellies, love handles and thighs.

But stimulating brown fat with mild stress could be used to help dieting, say researchers at Nottingham University.

They monitored women during maths tests and while watching a relaxation video. Levels of hormone cortisol were

‘Prevents obesity

and diabetes’

found to rise even with the anticipation of a stressful situation. And this caused the temperature of brown fat in the women’s necks to increase, showing that it was rapidly burning calories.

Writing in the journal Experimental Physiology, study author Professor Michael Symonds said: ‘The variation in brown fat activity between individuals may be explained by differences in their response to psychological stress.

‘This is important as brown fat has a unique capacity to rapidly generate heat and metabolise glucose.’

he added: ‘A better understanding of the main factors controlling brown fat activity, which include diet and activity, has the potential to introduce sustainable interventions designed to prevent obesity and diabetes.

‘In future, new techniques to induce mild stress to promote brown fat activity could be incorporated alongside dietary and/ or environmental interventions.’