Stress is both cause and effect; it causes obesity by producing hormones during stress phase and cause you to over-eat. Your lifestyle, job, and your relationship could be producing stress and making you obese. If you are active, always on the run and success-oriented, and living an unbalanced lifestyle, you could be preparing yourself for obesity by improper eating and by producing unneeded hormones in your body.

You may be on your way to suffering a heart attack. Physiologically, in response to a real or perceived threat, your “fight or flight response” is activated. This stimulates the adrenal gland to produce epinephrine. The release of epinephrine in the blood stimulates release of insulin, which lowers the blood sugar level, and as a result you experience hunger. You eat to relieve the hunger and the cycle continues. Reaction to stress can be either biochemical or psychological. In response to a serious emotional situation, whether it is positive or negative, you experience arousal that is either physiological or psychological.

You may experience physiological changes such as increased heart rate, pounding heart, sweaty hands, increased respiration, tense muscles and butterflies in your stomach. Psychologically, you may experience fear or anxiety. How one perceives the situation can cause biochemical changes in one’s body.

Studies on laboratory rats and other animals exposed to stressful situations confirm these biochemical changes in individuals exposed to stressful situations. But the interesting finding was that the level of biochemical changes varied from rat to rat, and the same for the other animals. This confirms that a healthy mental attitude and ability to skillfully handle the stressful situation can reduce the biochemical changes in your brain.
During a stressful situation several hormones produced. Of these, the three main hormones released are as follow:

Epinephrine– increased cortisol– increased and tryptophane– reduced.