The National *Center for Disease Control recently provided data that shows two out of three Americans are overweight or obese, making people of ideal body weight the minority. Consider at the same time, the weight loss and fitness industry is a multi-billion dollar machine. There is no way the third that are of ideal body weight are buying all of the weight loss "remedies", and fitness gear. People want to lose weight, and most are legitimately trying but there appears to be a dimension to the problem holding them back.
Since the 1950's, health experts have been saying the solution to our obesity is simple: 'Eat less and exercise more.' This is obviously not working and something is clearly missing! Here is the missing link: Stress causes weight gain. It's true and I'll show why it makes perfect sense.
When we get locked into a stressed state we are constantly producing the hormone 'Cortisol' (also known as the 'death hormone.') Cortisol production leads to increased appetite and increased belly 
fat, since our body's natural mechanism to fight stress is to begin storing reserves for what thousands of years ago might have been a very long winter, a scarcity of food or some other stressful state our ancestors would have encountered. Fat cells even have an enzyme called HSD that increases Cortisol levels within the cell as a way to encourage more fat storage, so you can see how the problem begins compound very quickly.