What is cortisol?

Cortisol is a hormone released by the adrenal cortex (kidney) in response to stress. It helps us to cope with stresses in our everyday lives.

Purpose of cortisol

Cortisol is not a bad hormone. It performs crucial bodily functions such as regulating and mobilising energy, activating immune system and it’s an anti inflammatory.

However, too much of cortisol can be detrimental to our health and weight loss. It is a catabolic hormone that breaks down tissues in the body and throws the body out of equilibrium.

Stress is the main cause of elevated cortisol levels. Physical and mental stress can occur due to :
- excessive training (intense or long exercise)
- insufficient sleep or rest
- work, personal and relationship matters
- severe caloric reduction
- lack of nutrition
- illness

Effects of too much cortisol:
- fat storage in the stomach (visceral fat)
- increased food intake in emotional eaters
- muscle loss
- increased blood sugar levels
- suppressed immune system
- irregular menstruation
- mood disturbances
- fatigue
- reduced libido

The association between cortisol and weight gain

Elevated levels of cortisol are associated with weight gain as they:
- increase appetite and cravings for carbohydrate and fat.
- increase fat accumulation in the stomach (belly fat).
- increase leptin and insulin resistance.
- reduce metabolism from muscle loss

How to control cortisol for weight loss

Learn to take control of stress before it takes control of you.

1. Determine the stressor.
What’s stressing you out? If you can get rid of the cause of stress, that’s great. If you have no power to change the source of stress, you can control how you react to it. Either ignore it (why worry when the situation is beyond your control) or face it (getting stressed does not resolve the situation).

2. Don’t over exercise
Regular exercise and proper nutrition can improve heart health and assist in weight loss. However, excessive exercise can cause stress and weight gain. Don’t exercise for too long or too hard without enough recovery. 45-60 minutes per session, 3-4 times a week is more than enough. Make sure you get enough recovery so your body can recover.

3. Good sleeping habits
Develop these good sleeping habits:
- Get 7-8 hours of quality sleep at night.
- Go to bed and wake up at the same time everyday.
- Avoid consuming stimulants such as caffeine or alcohol before bedtime or in the later part of the day.

4. Mind and body solutions
These include meditation, deep breathing, pilates, yoga, tai chi and hypnotherapy.

5. Other stress relief techniques
Watch a comedy movie, listen to music, take a walk, have a massage, go on a vacation and hang out with friends.

If you cannot lose weight even with exercise and diet, stress can be making you fat. A totally effective weight loss program should include management of stress for weight loss.

Chronic stress is a silent killer as it leads to serious health issues such as heart disease, diabetes and cancer. Stress management is not only crucial for weight loss, but also for attaining overall good health.

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If you want to have visible six pack abs and you’re a men you need to get below 10-12% body fat, and if you’re a women 16-19% body fat percentage.

But that doesn’t mean they will be really hard, there are some more things you need to do to have really rock hard abs.

Down below is the most basic yet most effective system for having a flat stomach with six pack abs.

The very first thing to do is getting rid of the entire body fat, this is because you can’t get rid of stomach fat if you still have fat on other parts of your body.

The stomach fat is the last fat to go and you can’t do anything about it it’s just the way the human body works.

First, Increase your metabolic rate and fat-burning hormones for rapid body fat burning.

This is something a lot of people are doing completely wrong they focus too much on a diet only or workouts only plan, and most of the time they even choose the wrong workouts or diet ending up with zero results.
Workouts

Doing the right workouts will increase your RMR extremely but doing the wrong will be just a waste of time.

The best workouts are multi-joint full-body workouts with free weights.

Weight lifting is the most basic yet most effective for burning fat.

There are tons of different weight lifting exercises and most of them you can do at your own home.
Foods

You can choose a lot of incredible foods to eat that boost your fat burning and some of them are fats so why in the world are so many people following a low-fat diet if fats can actually help you to lose weight?

Having a healthy diet is actually going back to the basics as well.

It’s the basics you mom always told you.

Can you remember hearing your mom telling you to eat your vegetables everyday and fruits? Can you remember her telling you not to eat too much junk food, well now you’re living proof she was right and you where wrong.

Your diet should consist of organic meat, vegetables, fruit, raw nuts (for their healthy fats), enough water, fish and eat 5/6 small meals a day.

Second, When you’ve increased your resting metabolic rate with the proper workouts you will burn huge amounts of fat incredibly fast, of course it depends on how much body-fat you currently have to be certain when you’ll have a really lean body.

Now when you start burning fat you will come to a low body-fat percentage where your abs are already visible and right now it’s the time to begin with specific ab exercises such as crunches, sit ups etc.

Remember only when you’ve done full-body multi-joint exercises to get a low body-fat percentage and burn fat it’s time to do ab exercises if you do them when you still have a lot of fat it’ll only be a waste of time.

This is the most profound blueprint for six pack abs and if you’re really serious about achieving this go to exercises to lose belly fat and stomach flattening exercises

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