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same time, you’re suffering from profound physical symptoms and from the negative emotions inevitably generated by your unbalanced brain chemistry. Why wouldn’t you self-medicate those symptoms with your favorite treat?
    If a steady diet of sugar, starch, and fat could keep you feeling good, it might be worth risking the weight gain, heart disease, diabetes, and cancer that you’re putting yourself at risk for, as well as whatever negative feelings you have as the result of your struggles with weight. Unfortunately, because of tolerance and withdrawal, food addiction is not a stable solution to the problem of unbalanced brain chemistry. You’re always going to keep wanting more—and you’re always risking withdrawal symptoms the moment you cut back. It’s hard to revel in the pleasures of food when food feels like your jailer.
    How Stress Can Make You Fat
     
    When you feel stressed, your adrenal glands produce a hormone called cortisol. Cortisol is intended for those times when you have to jump into action, as part of the “fight or flight” response. Cortisol raises your blood pressure, so you’ll be alert enough to face impending danger. It also instructs your cells to store fat in your midsection, since your body thinks this impending danger means you’ll need a storehouse of fat reserves if you’re forced to hibernate in a cave for a week with limited food.
    Combine the rush of cortisol with the sugary, starchy foods you might crave under stress, and you have a recipe for insulin resistance, a condition in which your body stops efficiently metabolizing your blood sugar. As a result, more of your calories are stored as fat. You’ll have trouble losing weight and you’re likely to start gaining.
    Initially, cortisol and the other elements of your adrenaline rush speed up your metabolism and suppress your appetite, so you’re focused on the danger at hand. But then when the rush wears off, you’re super-hungry. That’s because your body expected you to burn off all that extra blood sugar and fat running from a charging mammoth or fighting off an invader, so it creates some hunger to compensate for this supposed activity.
    But if your emergency was a pressing deadline, a fight with a friend, or a crying baby, your efforts have likely been emotional, not physical. And further, if you’ve created additional stress through “pitfall” thoughts or attitudes (see page 53), your stress—and your subsequent hunger—will increase. Now you’re eating food that your body doesn’t really need—although your biochemical reaction is insisting that you’re hungry.
    Cortisol also suppresses your immune system and depletes your serotonin and dopamine levels, sending you into a state of anxiety and, eventually, nudging you toward depression. Again, cortisol creates biochemical conditions in which you’re more likely to turn to food.
    Finally, the fat cells around your belly are particularly sensitive to cortisol and to high insulin levels. This area of the body is also very effective at storing energy. That’s why excess stress often leads to weight gain on our bellies.
    A fascinating study conducted at Yale University found that women with belly fat felt more overwhelmed by stressful tasks and produced more cortisol than women whose fat was stored primarily around their hips. So if you’d like a flatter belly, think about reducing the stress in your life. I’m the first one to agree that that isn’t easy—if just saying “reduce stress” were enough, none of us would be stressed! However, I can offer you something more helpful than empty advice: The activities suggested throughout this book to boost your brain chemistry are just the anti-stress tools you need! Boosting your serotonin levels will make you feel calmer and less stressed while giving you more emotional resources to cope with the stress you can’t avoid.
     

Addiction and Yo-Yo Dieting
     
    Suppose, like my patient Sondra, we do make it