It's largely due to the fact that we're stressed out.....A LOT! See, when the body senses stress it releases a large amount of the hormone Cortisol. As cortisol floats through the blood stream it causes a number of reactions to happen in the body. One of them is that it likes to take any calories it can find and store it as fat. And cortisol doesn't just put it where no one will notice. It has a sense of humor and loves to put it in our hips, butt, and gut!
Combine our stressful lifestyles with fast food, high sugar sodas, and snacking when we get a chance while taking kids to dance or soccer or baseball or whatever, and we are a ticking time bomb for the internal explosion of fat. KABOOM! Suddenly we look in the mirror and wonder "How did this happen?"
The answer is, of course, simple. We relax. No, not with a bag of chips and coke. We allow ourselves times of peace away from the to-do lists. We go for a walk on a sunny day or play with the kids. And most easily, we breathe.
Belly breathing, moving the belly out while you inhale and squeezing it back in during the exhale, moves the body out of the stress response and into relaxation. Simple breathing is all it takes to squelch cortisol and prevent the buildup of stress fat. It's so easy, we blow right past it.
But now that you know, will you do it?
Dr. K