The GirlAlive Blog

Cortisol, obesity, and people who need to shut up.

August 26, 2010 on 10:31 am | In Life In General | 1 Comment

I’m not a doctor, so keep that in mind as I try to explain the processes that follow.

Okay, so I hear a lot about the “obesity epidemic” because I’m fat. I don’t eat donuts all day and I don’t touch fast food. But people like you look at me and think I’m a huge disgusting pig. I know you think that because a percentage of you feel a need to tell me that every time I leave my house.

Here’s the thing, everyone who tells me that I’m fat is just making the fatness problem worse. Let me explain how.

Your adrenal glands produce a hormone called cortisol. They produce a little bit of cortisol all the time to help regulate your blood pressure and metabolism. But if you are stressed, depressed or anxious, your adrenal glands spew out tons of the stuff. And cortisol acts in your blood system a bit like a 4-year-old put in charge of feeding the cat. The 4-year-old (cortisol) will shove as much cat food (carbohydrates) into the cat (fat cells) as possible until the cat is so bloated it can’t walk. Cortisol grabs every free calorie and shoves it directly into your fat cells, making you obese. You have seen this in action if you’ve ever seen someone who is treated with high doses of corticosteroids. They can eat nothing but celery and still gain weight.

So if we put this in the real world, let’s say you have a 12-year-old girl who is a bit of a nerd, with buck teeth and glasses (I’m not going to name any names or anything). Every day of her life is nothing but combat-level stress. She gets teased at the bus stop. She gets bullied on the bus. Then she gets picked-on all day at school. Then she gets physically tortured by her orthodontist until she goes home to be tormented by her big brother. After all that, this girl is a walking cortisol factory. She has cortisol building up in her system during every waking hour because of the stress and depression that plagues her life. So everything she eats whether it is cookies or carrot sticks turns directly into fat.

So this girl grows up and is no longer in grade school, so she should be able to relax and lose some weight, right? Nope. She is picked on by co-workers. She is mocked by complete strangers for being fat. Children point and laugh at her. She can’t watch tv, go on the internet or read a newspaper without hearing about how fat people are the worst thing in the whole world. Her stress level, if it has changed, has only gone up. So she is still a walking cortisol factory. The thing is, the main thing they’re picking on now is her weight, which would not have been an issue at all if she had just been left alone when she was a kid.

I submit to you that we are not facing a crisis caused by fat people or by fast food restaurants. I think that we do not have an “obesity epidemic”. Obesity is just a symptom and by-product of a worldwide asshole epidemic. And obesity will never be cured until skinny people learn to shut the hell up and mind their own business. So go ahead and teach your kids to eat their veggies, but while you’re at it, try teaching them some kindness and tolerance too.