Can Losing Weight Increase Stress?

Are you counting calories and still having trouble losing weight? Feel like you're getting nowhere? Stressed out? It's not all in your head.

A new study in Psychosomatic Medicine shows that low-calorie diets may not be as perfect and simple as once thought.

Researchers studied 121 women in a three week controlled study to evaluate the effect of the two aspects associated with dieting: restricted caloric intake and monitoring caloric intake. They broke the women into four groups in a 2 x 2 study. One group monitored and restricted their diets to 1200 calories a day, one monitored their diet without restricting it, one group was fed 1200 calories a day without tracking and the control group ate normally without tracking their intake.

Study participants reported perceived stress and gave 2 days of diurnal saliva to test cortisol levels. The results from the study indicated that restricting calories leads to an increase in the body's production of cortisol, and monitoring calories caused an increase in dieters perceived stress.

What is cortisol? Cortisol is a hormone the body produces when it's under stress. This leads to weight retention, and cortisol specifically causes an accumulation of abdominal fat. (Read more about cortisol and its effects at TheFactsAboutFitness)

The study's conclusion: "Dieting may be deleterious to psychological well-being and biological functioning, and changes in clinical recommendations may be in order."

But how can you lose weight without restricting your calories and keeping track of them? You can't.

Janet Tomiyama, a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Scholar at the University of California - San Francisco suggests doing "anything you can do to decrease your stress when dieting is a good idea," or "ditch the diet and exercise more" in an interview with USA Today.

Instead of focusing on food avoidance, dieters should focus on making healthy food choices and exercising, both factors that will not only help them lose weight, but will also increase their overall health.