Hundreds of millions of people around the world are looking to lose weight, but find themselves frustrated when the weight doesn’t come off. And while there are many reasons why people can’t lose weight, there’s one very fascinating yet lesser-recognized cause for weight loss resistance:

Trauma.

In this article, we’re going to take a look at the connection between trauma and weight gain – and respond to the question that many people have been wondering: 

Can trauma cause weight gain?

For so many of us, it can be truly hard to understand why we’re not able to lose weight. It’s a very common phenomenon to work with people who have fasted, gone on extremely low-calorie diets, or they’ve exercised hard – and despite these intense measures, they don’t lose a single pound.

According to the unquestioned scientific model of calories in, calories out, these outcomes are biochemically impossible. And yet, if you’ve been around the weight loss universe for a while, you’ve heard many variations of this theme. 

So how can we explain these anomalies? And what science can we turn to?

Well, trauma-associated weight loss resistance is one explanation for this phenomenon.

So let’s step out into the more cutting-edge of weight loss physiology and psychology. Let’s look at: 

• What trauma actually is
  
  
• How trauma can impact our calorie burning capacity, and how trauma can cause weight gain
  
  
• The science behind the weight-trauma connection
  
  
• What healing from weight gain due to trauma can look like
  
  

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What Is Trauma & How Can It Affect Our Calorie-Burning Metabolism?

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In the course of a lifetime, it’s highly likely that we’ll experience many different kinds of stress. Here, stress can mean anxieties, hurts, worries about the future, relationship challenges, work difficulties, betrayals, disappointments, accidents, and much more.

Normally, when life is going well for us, we tend to resolve our stressors. We digest them. We metabolize them. We learn from our difficult times, and we let go of what doesn’t work for us. We move on to the next thing.

But when it comes to trauma, things are different. 

Think of trauma as a potent, undigested life experience. 

It’s an emotional and physiological response to an intense life experience – that we just can’t quite seem to recover from.

Trauma lives on in the body as a constant, low-lying physiologic stress response, and an ongoing emotional disturbance.

Stated in another way: When events in our life are too overwhelming and too upsetting for our psyche and body, the event lives on in us as trauma until such time that we can unwind and heal it.

In our usual day-to-day built-in stress response, our chemistry and physiology instantly change in response to anything we perceive as a threat. Specifically, in a stress response:

• Heart rate rises
• Blood pressure increases
• Stress hormone output surges
• Insulin levels increase
• Digestion is put on “hold”

And all of these resolve themselves once the brain has determined that we are no longer in any kind of danger. This is the normal sympathetic response of a healthy, well-functioning nervous system.

But after one or more traumatic experiences in life, the body doesn’t quite know how to adjust. Our nervous system can become dysregulated, and some of our normal physiologic responses can become interrupted.

So, trauma is a stress response that does not truly resolve itself.

And as you likely know, chronic low-level stress is not where the body creates health. Quite the opposite. 

Trauma can trigger all kinds of physical and emotional symptoms including, but not limited to:

• Physical ailments and diseases
• Headaches
• High blood pressure
• Digestive problems
• Depression
• Anger
• Brain fog
• Compulsive habits
• Perfectionism  
• Emotional eating

And what many people who have dieted for years without lasting success may not realize:  

Trauma can lead to weight gain.

Many experts have wisely identified that trauma-associated weight loss resistance is correlated with increased incidence of emotional eating, or stress eating, or eating to dissociate, or simply turning to food to soothe our underlying discomfort.

In other words, those of us who have trauma in our system will often turn to food to relieve stress and create relaxation. We eat more food. 

But there’s more to the story. Many people are unaware that …  

Trauma by itself can directly impact calorie-burning metabolism, regardless of caloric intake.

In other words, you can eat low-calorie all you like, you can starve your body, and exercise it like crazy, and not lose a single pound – all because of trauma-driven changes to our calorie-burning capacity.

With that said, let’s take a minute to look at the science behind trauma and weight gain…

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A Look At The Science Behind The Weight-Trauma Connection

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First, it’s important to state that our understanding of the weight-trauma connection is still in its infancy. With that, we can make at least three initial statements about the physio-chemical events that are likely contributing to trauma-driven weight loss resistance. 

#1: Trauma, via the stress response, disrupts calorie burning metabolism through increased output of stress hormones

During the stress response, the body secretes stress hormones such as cortisol, epinephrine, and norepinephrine. These are incredibly powerful chemicals that in the smallest amounts can exert powerful and far-reaching effects.

Our hormones create the physiologic responses necessary to adequately deal with stress. But with trauma, what we see is a continuous firing of these stress hormones, which results in a series of unwanted physiologic responses. Among these are an adverse impact on our calorie-burning ability. 

Let’s state this in simpler terms.

Excess cortisol production is strongly associated with weight gain, weight loss resistance, fat storage, and interestingly, fat deposition around the midsection – exactly the place where most people wish to lose weight, not gain it. 

Think of trauma as a silent cortisol factory that’s always running in the background.

The more you produce, the more it signals your body to store fat, and to hold onto that fat as vigorously as possible.

In a typical study, laboratory mice who are given a peaceful environment with enough food, enough space, and exercise wheels will all have one thing in common – they’ll be at a normal and healthy weight.¹

But when we take the same mice and intermittently shock their cage with intense and unpredictable electric charges – those mice will become obese, even though they eat the exact same amount of food and display the same amount of physical activity.

Stress hormones have changed their calorie burning capacity.

#2: Trauma, via the stress response, disrupts calorie-burning metabolism through insulin resistance.

Insulin is a hormone produced by the pancreas that plays numerous important roles, including helping the body use sugar – or glucose – for energy. For some of us, our body can become less responsive to insulin – leading to a metabolic condition known as insulin resistance. 

As a result of insulin resistance, the pancreas produces even more insulin in an effort to flood the system and help our cells absorb much-needed glucose.

Unfortunately, a common side effect of insulin resistance is weight gain.

Across the globe, the prevalence of insulin resistance is between 15-45% of the adult population. 

That means there’s a lot of people trying to lose weight who are being stymied by this metabolic roadblock.  

There are a number of contributing factors to the onset of insulin resistance: 

First, the release of inflammatory cytokines after a stressful experience or a traumatic event can trigger this condition. 

Cytokines are a class of chemicals that amongst many important roles, help regulate our immune system when it comes to fighting off harmful germs, bacteria, and toxins. Cytokines can be helpful – serving as anti-inflammatory substances. But they can also be problematic, and trigger excess inflammation.

The bottom line is that cellular inflammation can help cause or contribute to insulin resistance, thus leading to weight loss resistance.

Next, the excess cortisol produced via an ongoing stress response makes our cells less sensitive to insulin. That’s why stress is considered a major contributing factor to diabetes. So the more stress we experience, the more cortisol we’ll produce, the greater will be our probability of developing insulin resistance, and the more likely it will be that our calorie burning metabolism slows down.  

And on top of all this, if we eat a diet of low nutrient density, that’s high in sugar and low in essential fatty acids, we’ve created the perfect storm for insulin resistance driven weight gain. That’s because foods such as processed meats, poor quality fats, fried foods, white flour products, corn chips, sugary drinks and more can be highly inflammatory by themselves.

#3: Trauma, via the stress response, disrupts calorie-burning metabolism through changes in gut flora.

It’s well known that stress by itself can lead to unwanted changes in our gut microbiome. What most people don’t realize is that one intense trauma or stressful event by itself can dramatically deplete our gut flora population.²

What’s fascinating is that adverse changes in gut flora can lead to weight gain, and weight loss resistance. The science of this phenomenon is still being studied, yet the implications are profound.

We are dependent on tiny, invisible-to-the-eye creatures to digest our food, absorb our nutrients, empower our immune system, support our brain function, regulate a long list of metabolic processes, and manage our weight.

One proposed mechanism for the gut flora-weight connection is inflammation. A proliferation of unhealthy gut bacteria can lead to an increase in inflammatory markers in the body, which once again, can lead to insulin resistance. 

Another proposed mechanism is focused on intestinal permeability. Increased  intestinal permeability is often referred to as “leaky gut.” 

Clinicians and researchers have postulated that factors such as psychological stress, trauma, poor diet, excess alcohol, harmful chemicals, food allergies and more can cause undigested proteins and unwanted substances and pathogens to more easily enter the bloodstream – leaky gut. 

Once again, this can lead to systemic inflammation, which can then lead to insulin resistance. 

And when we mix trauma-associated gut flora changes with a poor quality diet, our gut microbiome is even more compromised when it comes to ideal weight management.

It’s not uncommon for victims of trauma to experience lifelong digestive upset. This is partly due to changes in the gut flora, and partly due to the ongoing firing of the stress response – sympathetic nervous system activation.

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Trauma-Associated Weight Gain Isn’t Your Fault

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So if you or your loved ones seem to be eating the right foods, the right amount of calories, doing a healthy amount of exercise – and you’are still not losing weight, you now have one possibility to explore … trauma.

It’s possible that your calorie-burning metabolism may be held back by traumatic events that occurred long ago.

The compassionate truth is, trauma-associated weight gain isn’t your fault. You’re doing nothing wrong. Your body is simply doing its best to deal with a difficult-to-digest life experience. That’s it, plain and simple – and the good news is, you can absolutely heal from trauma … it just takes some awareness, patience, good support, and some helpful, time-tested practices.

With that said, here are some practical ideas for dealing with suspected trauma-driven weight loss resistance…

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How to Heal from Trauma-Associated Weight Loss Resistance 

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In the last few decades, effective trauma therapies have become more prevalent and more widely sought after.

That’s because we are wisely noticing how profound trauma is when it comes to how it can impact our emotional well-being and our physical health. Trauma work is one of the cutting edge therapies in all of psychology and medicine.

There are many trauma therapy systems to choose from. Some are self-guided. Others require working with a professional.

These modalities include but are not limited to:

• Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Therapy (EMDR)
• Family Systems Therapy
• Dynamic Neural Retraining System (DNRS)
• The Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT)
• Polyvagal Therapy 
• Breathwork
• Somatic Experiencing
• The Brain Retraining Program 
• NeuroAffective Relational Model (NARM), and others…

I recommend that people consider working with a trauma specialist. A great place to start is through the Somatic Experiencing platform.

If you prefer a way to work on your own, consider DNRS or the Brain Retraining Program. 

The best trauma recovery programs are those that help you retrain your nervous system so it can get out of a constant stress response, which allows your body to begin to properly regulate itself again.

I’ve seen wonderful results for people in this regard when it comes to weight loss resistance, digestive issues, chronic pain, fatigue, depression, and more.

Additionally, when it comes to our relationship with food and body, I recommend working with a Certified Mind Body Eating Coach – the kind of coach we train here at the Institute for the Psychology of Eating.

These practitioners are uniquely skilled when it comes to helping people bring down their stress response when it comes to food. For example, a majority of people who’ve been trying to lose weight have grown to see food as “the enemy.” 

After all, if our excess body fat is the problem, then the reason that we have that unwanted body fat must be food. So we are habituated to fight food, fight our body, attack ourselves with unkind thoughts, follow intense and impossible diets, and subject ourselves to punishing exercise.

All of which produces a stress response, which as we’ve seen, creates the exact chemical and physiologic conditions for weight gain and weight loss resistance.

Certified Mind Body Eating Coaches help their clients work with their relationship with food, their limiting beliefs, their stressful thoughts around food and body, the triggers that have them turn to unwanted eating habits, and much more. They help their clients in a compassionate and natural way to let go of the stress response that can take over when it comes to food and weight. 

So when it comes to healing our trauma, whatever it may have been, it’s equally important to heal our relationship with food, and with our body. This means making friends with food. It means learning to eat slowly, with presence, awareness, and pleasure – all of which create a physiological relaxation response, which is the place where stress is vanquished and trauma is healed. 

I hope you’re beginning to see how our inability to lose weight cannot simply be passed off as a lack of willpower. We can no longer assume that those who are weight loss resistant are lazy, or have some character fault.

Yes, sometimes weight loss is truly a function of calories in, and calories out. But oftentimes, there’s far more to our weight loss story. Every person who’s trying to lose weight has their own unique weight loss journey. Some need to tweak their diet. Some need to move more. Some need to look at underlying metabolic issues such as thyroid health.

And others need to look at the impact of trauma on their calorie burning ability. In doing so, we not only address the hidden roadblock to our weight loss efforts, but we create the kind of emotional health that leaves us more empowered, more at peace, and happier to be alive and fulfill our best destiny.

One way you can get started, on your own, exploring this psychological and emotional side of your food and weight journey is to enroll in our self-study course, The Emotional Eating Breakthrough. This online program will help you drop the shame, confusion and struggle from your relationship with food, and change your story around food, weight, and body as the ‘enemy’ or the ‘problem.’ You can try it risk free with our 30-day, no-questions-asked, money-back guarantee.

References:

1. Patterson, Z. R., & Abizaid, A. (2013). “Stress induced obesity: lessons from rodent models of stress.” Frontiers in neuroscience, 7, 130. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3721047/
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2. Madison, A., & Kiecolt-Glaser, J. K. (2019). “Stress, depression, diet, and the gut microbiota: human-bacteria interactions at the core of psychoneuroimmunology and nutrition.” Current opinion in behavioral sciences, 28, 105–110. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7213601/
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